Plight of Gujarat saltpan women: Govt admits all-round failure; Kanya Kelavni drive for girl education flops

Counterview Desk
The Gujarat government has acknowledged its complete failure in ameliorating the plight of the women involved in cultivating salt in hundreds of agariyas (saltpans) in the Little Rann of Kutch in Gujarat. A still unreleased “research” study, running into 40-odd pages, the Gender Resource Centre, operating directly under the department of women and child, Gujarat government, has said that, despite existence of large number of government schemes, “there is no change in the economic, social and health related problems of the women working in agariyas.”
Nearly 43,000 men and women from 108 villages situated on the border of the Little Rann work in the agariyas for eight months in a year, living in sub-human conditions, mainly poorly knit tents, without electricity, drinking water, health facilities and education for children. Belonging to other backward class (OBC) communities, they have been demanding recognition as “forest dwellers”, as the Little Rann is a Wild Ass Sanctuary, as it would give them right to own land under the forest rights law.
Admitting that women have to work for longer working hours – 15 hours continuously on an average as against the men who work for 10 hours – the study, titled “An Overview of the Condition of Women Working in Agariyas”, and based on an interaction with 33 women working in agariyas, says that women are not even provided with even “health health facilities”, as a result of which one witnesses “a high incidence of health-related problems among women.” The result is that, there is a “higher incidence of widows among agariya families compared to others.”
“Women begin their day at around 4 in the morning, cleaning up the tent, cooking food, go to the agariyas to work with menfolk, look after children, and sleep at 9.00 pm”, the study reports.
“Skin-related diseases are widely prevalent among agariya cultivators. The emergency 108 service, available in villages, refuses to reach up to them in agariyas, which are situated at least 7 kilometres inside the Little Rann. Nor is there any availability of vehicles, especially during night hours so that they could reach a hospital”, the study says, adding, women further feel discriminated as the “mobile health vans, which reach agariyas just once a week, have no women health workers, and women refuse to reveal gynecological problems to the men health workers.”
The study says, “One witnesses a higher incidence of malnutrition among women and children during the months they work in agariyas. Despite hard labour they do, they face a shortage of of nutritious food. Living in the Little Rann they are unable to access ghee, oil, milk, green vegetables, fruits, and the vicious circle of lack of these food items continues unabated. It is only once in a fortnight that they are able to go to their villages to access food items.”
Pointing towards poor literacy rates among agariya women, with just about one-third of them literate, the study quotes them as saying that they are unable to make their children study continuously. “Many children work in agariyas. They live in the Little Rann for eight months, and go to school only for four months, as a result of which they are often very weak in studies”, the study admits, suggesting failure of the state-sponsored Kanya Kelavni girl enrolment drive. “There is no emphasis on ensuring that agariya girls study”, it underlines.
During group discussions, the study says, the agariya women complained of lack of availability of drinking water in the Little Rann. “The tankers provide water to us next to the agariyas just once or twice a day. They pour water into the tanks put up by us. We bath just twice or thrice a week. Often we must bring water in buckets on bicycles several kilometres away. The river is far away. There is a real shortage of water”, an agariya woman is quoted as saying.
Other problems the agariya women face include no toilets in the Little Rann, drunkenness among male agariyas leading to high incidence of domestic violence, inability to marry girls in non-agariya families, lack of social life, and so on. The study has asked the Gujarat government's urgent intervention, recommending, among other things:

Regular supply of water through tanker
Setting up of mobile toilets
Provision of all-weather tents which could withstand strong winds and torrential rains
Provision of basic facilities at the agariya doorsteps, including food items, including vegetables and other nutritious food at regular interval
Regular visit by mobile health vans consisting of female health workers, with availability of basic medicines needed to address gynecological problems women
Provision facilities to vaccinate of infants
Provision of mobile schools for out of school children
Regular availability of basic information about government schemes meant for women
Special programmes to empower especially young women

Comments

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

India's health workers have no legal right for their protection, regrets NGO network

Counterview Desk In a letter to Union labour and employment minister Santosh Gangwar, the civil rights group Occupational and Environmental Health Network of India (OEHNI), writing against the backdrop of strike by Bhabha hospital heath care workers, has insisted that they should be given “clear legal right for their protection”.

Uttarakhand tunnel disaster: 'Question mark' on rescue plan, appraisal, construction

By Bhim Singh Rawat* As many as 40 workers were trapped inside Barkot-Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi after a portion of the 4.5 km long, supposedly completed portion of the tunnel, collapsed early morning on Sunday, Nov 12, 2023. The incident has once again raised several questions over negligence in planning, appraisal and construction, absence of emergency rescue plan, violations of labour laws and environmental norms resulting in this avoidable accident.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Job opportunities decreasing, wages remain low: Delhi construction workers' plight

By Bharat Dogra* It was about 32 years back that a hut colony in posh Prashant Vihar area of Delhi was demolished. It was after a great struggle that the people evicted from here could get alternative plots that were not too far away from their earlier colony. Nirmana, an organization of construction workers, played an important role in helping the evicted people to get this alternative land. At that time it was a big relief to get this alternative land, even though the plots given to them were very small ones of 10X8 feet size. The people worked hard to construct new houses, often constructing two floors so that the family could be accommodated in the small plots. However a recent visit revealed that people are rather disheartened now by a number of adverse factors. They have not been given the proper allotment papers yet. There is still no sewer system here. They have to use public toilets constructed some distance away which can sometimes be quite messy. There is still no...

Women's rights leaders told to negotiate with Muslimness, as India's donor agencies shun the word Muslim

By A Representative Former vice-president Hamid Ansari has sharply criticized donor agencies engaged in nongovernmental development work, saying that they seek to "help out" marginalizes communities with their funds, but shy away from naming Muslims as the target group, something, he insisted, needs to change. Speaking at a book release function in Delhi, he said, since large sections of Muslims are poor, they need political as also social outreach.

Gujarat Bitcoin scam worth Rs 5,000 crore "linked" with BJP leaders: Need for Supreme Court monitored probe

By Shaktisinh Gohil* BJP hit a jackpot in the form of demonetisation, which it used as an alibi to convert black money into white in Gujarat. Even as party scrambles for answers of how the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB), whose director is BJP president Amit Shah, received old currency worth Rs 745.58 crore in just five days, and how Rs 3118.51 crore was deposited in 11 district cooperative banks linked with Gujarat BJP leaders, a new mega Bitcoin scam, worth more than Rs 5,000 crore has been unraveled.

Warning bells for India: Tribal exploitation by powerful corporate interests may turn into international issue

By Ashok Shrimali* Warning bells are ringing for India. Even as news drops in from Odisha that Adivasi villages, one after another, are rejecting the top UK-based MNC Vedanta's plea for mining, a recent move by two senior scholars Felix Padel and Samarendra Das suggests the way tribals are being exploited in India by powerful international and national business interests may become an international issue. In fact, one has only to count days when things may be taken up at the United Nations level, with India being pushed to the corner. Padel, it may be recalled, is a major British authority on indigenous peoples across the world, with several scholarly books to his credit.

Counterview

Search This Blog