Uma Vishnu - Demonetisation - Indian women struggle to start all over again
They had little
financial access and autonomy to begin with and now with their secret stash of
cash gone after demonetisation, women in India struggle to start all over again
Biro, o… Biro,” calls
out Chander, a jute sack slung over her shoulder, her feet plodding through the
ground that’s carpeted green with the slush of bathua and dil leaves. “She goes
missing every few minutes aur mujhe dhoondna padta hai (I have to search for
her),” says the 60-year-old, now walking back through the early morning crush
of people and battery-operated e-rickshaws at the Ghazipur vegetable mandi in
east Delhi.
“I have been selling
vegetables for 25 years but things have never been this bad. Yeh notebandi ke
baad toh maal waise hi pada rahta hai (after demonetisation, my vegetables
haven’t been selling). Earlier, I would earn at least Rs 1,000 a day; now, if I
buy vegetables for Rs 1,000, I only take home Rs 400,” she says, sitting on her
haunches on one of the pavements lining the market.
Chanderkanta and
Birwati. Neighbours and friends, a sisterhood of shared troubles and
companionship. Every afternoon, they walk down from Chilla, an urban village on
the fringes of Mayur Vihar Phase I, a residential colony in east Delhi, and
join the long line of vegetable vendors on the pavement outside ASN Senior
Secondary School. On days that they go to the mandi, they spend hours scouring
for vegetables while haggling, squabbling and joking with the vendors, lug
their heavy sacks across the market and wait for their sons to take back some
of the stuff on their cycles. The rest they carry — about 25 kg each — on their
heads.
As she helps her son
load the sacks on his cycle, she says, “Achha, aapko pata hain yeh notebandi
kab khatam hogi (Do you know when this demonetisation will end)? People say
things will get better in a few days.” Her optimism dissipates as swiftly: “Par
gareeb ka kuch theek nahin hota hai (For the poor, nothing gets better).”
A little over two months
after the government demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, the queues outside
banks and ATMs have begun to shrink and the narrative has shifted from black
money to plastic money. However, both these plots have sidestepped women such
as Chander and Biro, women running households with little or no financial
support.
According to Census
2011, women head 10.9 per cent of the 246.6 million households in the country,
a significant number of these households in rural areas and in states such as
Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. In a society steeped in patriarchy, it’s only
likely that women are thrust into leadership roles by forced circumstances such
as widowhood, like in the case of Chander, or because the men choose not to
work, as in Biro’s home… read more:
see also
More posts on demonetisation
Nation-wide public tragedy unreported in India's mainstream media - click to see glimpses of ordinary Indians' reactions to note-ban crisis and please circulate - Scroll down the contents of the link above for clips of mass unrest in Indian society from shopkeepers & artisans to workers & peasants. Information about this assault on the lives of millions is being withheld by the mass media
