They say, "Going back to your own past is never easy!" I tasted the uneasiness this week, albeit a bit differently.
Murshidabad district of West Bengal is a place that I associate with my childhood as my father belonged to that district. All our holidays were spent near the mighty Ganga. Mighty, cause when I saw the river the Farakka barrage was already built and that brought in huge quantity of water to Ganga ..to much dismay of the neighboring country! It was beautiful to live in the village home surrounded by coconut and mango trees, pond in the backyard and a river flowing at doorstep. I never learnt to fear water. I lived with and loved water. And our love-story continues..
I visited the same place (well! not my village) last week and being a rationale human being, I knew I could not expect to go back to the fun and frolic of my childhood. After all I was going to one of the poorest districts of the country. Murshidabad is famous for all the wrong reasons. It is a strangely positioned district which has one border with a neighboring country and another border with a neighboring state. But what awaited me was much worse than what I expected.
I encountered a society crumbling at the center as well as at the ends. I met women who got married at 12, delivered babies at 14-15 and then got thrown out of their marital homes by in-laws by the time they are 16-17. These women were physically and verbally abused almost every day during these years by, either the husband or the mother in law. They are lucky if they get thrown out because the husbands also try to sell them. You heard me right! They get sold off into trafficking circles by their own relatives. This is so even in their maternal home. They are trafficked to various parts of the country. "There is not a single brothel in the country that does not have a girl from Domkal Block", someone said with much sadness in her voice. Why are so many women thrown out of their homes, I asked. "They don't want us anymore. We are not fresh pieces. When they can get new women and the family of the women will also pay them money (read dowry) for taking these new brides home, why will they want us anymore?", one particularly stoic young girl responded.
Bhanu wanted to talk to me personally. She said she does not want to recount her "shame" in front of all the women present there. We were sitting in a meeting in which about 22 women participated. All of them were trafficked at some point or the other. Many of them were currently involved in sex work, whereas some of the recently rescued ones were trying to find a feet in some socially acceptable vocation as they have found some support from the local NGO and the minority affairs department. Bhanu looked very frail and she waited patiently to talk to me with a child in her lap. I probed, "How old are you?" She smiled and answered in a timid voice, "I am 18". She did not look more than 16 to me. Her daughter was a joyful child constantly looking for something to put in her mouth, like all children her age.
Bhanu's story can beat any fiction. She married a man of her choice at the age of 16 and went to live with him. Her brother-in-law was after her from the very first day. She could prevent his advances till her husband was with her. However, when her husband went to Tamilnadu to find work, she was quickly made pregnant by her brother in law. Bhanu was in a state of shock and six months' pregnant when her husband returned home. This caused a family feud and her husband committed suicide! The brother-in-law found a good opportunity to quickly get rid of her and marry again. When she filed a police complaint, he was let off as he was a minor! She was thus left to fend for herself and the unborn child. When NGO workers found her she was walking aimlessly on the railway track with not so good intentions in her mind. They took her to a rescue home. She was counselled to file a police complaint (again) against the perpetrator and gave birth to her daughter in this rescue home. Bhanu said, the SDM was really helpful. The brother-in-law was called, reprimanded and police was asked to get a DNA test done. The story however ends there because police is asking for "some reward" for this extra huffing and puffing that will adversely affect their bulging tummy!
Bhanu, who is one of the four girls living with her parents with her daughter now, has no means to fulfill such demand. Her father is a daily laborer. She seemed at the verge of a mental break-down when I talked to her. She said, she has developed a stone in the Gall Bladder. Her mother is seriously ill. They need food, immediately, for her daughter. She needs medication. So does her mother. She asked me does she have a future? Does her girl have a future that is safe, healthy and bright? I tried to suppress my tears and answered calmly about the avenues that one can explore and how one needed to keep her head cool to be able to carry on the struggle. I hoped hard that years of training helped me in not giving away my doubts about her survival as even the last month the NGO workers ran hither and tither to save her from a trafficking attempt middle of the night. For once, I was thankful for the lack of electricity and the darkness of an autumn evening that engulfed us. That helped me hide my real emotion.
As if to confirm my fear regarding her vulnerability to trafficking, she said, "A man has told me there is a factory in Gujarat that pays Rs 5000 per month plus food and stay for making spoons. I think I will go there. My mother needs to be saved. If she is alive my sisters will have a future. If she dies, my father will remarry and these girls will have no one for them." Her voice trailed off....
I visited the same place (well! not my village) last week and being a rationale human being, I knew I could not expect to go back to the fun and frolic of my childhood. After all I was going to one of the poorest districts of the country. Murshidabad is famous for all the wrong reasons. It is a strangely positioned district which has one border with a neighboring country and another border with a neighboring state. But what awaited me was much worse than what I expected.
I encountered a society crumbling at the center as well as at the ends. I met women who got married at 12, delivered babies at 14-15 and then got thrown out of their marital homes by in-laws by the time they are 16-17. These women were physically and verbally abused almost every day during these years by, either the husband or the mother in law. They are lucky if they get thrown out because the husbands also try to sell them. You heard me right! They get sold off into trafficking circles by their own relatives. This is so even in their maternal home. They are trafficked to various parts of the country. "There is not a single brothel in the country that does not have a girl from Domkal Block", someone said with much sadness in her voice. Why are so many women thrown out of their homes, I asked. "They don't want us anymore. We are not fresh pieces. When they can get new women and the family of the women will also pay them money (read dowry) for taking these new brides home, why will they want us anymore?", one particularly stoic young girl responded.
Bhanu wanted to talk to me personally. She said she does not want to recount her "shame" in front of all the women present there. We were sitting in a meeting in which about 22 women participated. All of them were trafficked at some point or the other. Many of them were currently involved in sex work, whereas some of the recently rescued ones were trying to find a feet in some socially acceptable vocation as they have found some support from the local NGO and the minority affairs department. Bhanu looked very frail and she waited patiently to talk to me with a child in her lap. I probed, "How old are you?" She smiled and answered in a timid voice, "I am 18". She did not look more than 16 to me. Her daughter was a joyful child constantly looking for something to put in her mouth, like all children her age.
Bhanu's story can beat any fiction. She married a man of her choice at the age of 16 and went to live with him. Her brother-in-law was after her from the very first day. She could prevent his advances till her husband was with her. However, when her husband went to Tamilnadu to find work, she was quickly made pregnant by her brother in law. Bhanu was in a state of shock and six months' pregnant when her husband returned home. This caused a family feud and her husband committed suicide! The brother-in-law found a good opportunity to quickly get rid of her and marry again. When she filed a police complaint, he was let off as he was a minor! She was thus left to fend for herself and the unborn child. When NGO workers found her she was walking aimlessly on the railway track with not so good intentions in her mind. They took her to a rescue home. She was counselled to file a police complaint (again) against the perpetrator and gave birth to her daughter in this rescue home. Bhanu said, the SDM was really helpful. The brother-in-law was called, reprimanded and police was asked to get a DNA test done. The story however ends there because police is asking for "some reward" for this extra huffing and puffing that will adversely affect their bulging tummy!
Bhanu, who is one of the four girls living with her parents with her daughter now, has no means to fulfill such demand. Her father is a daily laborer. She seemed at the verge of a mental break-down when I talked to her. She said, she has developed a stone in the Gall Bladder. Her mother is seriously ill. They need food, immediately, for her daughter. She needs medication. So does her mother. She asked me does she have a future? Does her girl have a future that is safe, healthy and bright? I tried to suppress my tears and answered calmly about the avenues that one can explore and how one needed to keep her head cool to be able to carry on the struggle. I hoped hard that years of training helped me in not giving away my doubts about her survival as even the last month the NGO workers ran hither and tither to save her from a trafficking attempt middle of the night. For once, I was thankful for the lack of electricity and the darkness of an autumn evening that engulfed us. That helped me hide my real emotion.As if to confirm my fear regarding her vulnerability to trafficking, she said, "A man has told me there is a factory in Gujarat that pays Rs 5000 per month plus food and stay for making spoons. I think I will go there. My mother needs to be saved. If she is alive my sisters will have a future. If she dies, my father will remarry and these girls will have no one for them." Her voice trailed off....
Excellent Nayana…. I would like to remember few words of Amartya Sen on Development as Freedom….
ReplyDelete“Development can be seen, it is argued here, as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy. Focusing on human freedoms contrasts with narrower views of development, such as identifying development with the growth of gross national product, or with the rise in personal incomes, or with industrialization, or with technological advance, or with social modernization. Growth of GNP or of individual incomes can, of course, be very important as means to expanding the freedoms enjoyed by the members of the society. But freedoms depend also on other determinants, such as social and economic arrangements (for example, facilities for educc:ltion and health care) as well as political and civil rights (for example, the liberty to participate in public discussion and scrutiny). Similarly, industrialization or technological progress or social modernization can substantially contribute to expanding human freedom, but freedom depends on other influences as well. If freedom is what development advances, then there is a major argument for concentrating on that overarching objective, rather than on some particular means, or some specially chosen list of instruments. Viewing development in terms of expanding substantive freedoms directs attention to the ends that make development important, rather than merely to some of the means that, inter alia, playa prominent part in the process.
Development requires the removal of major sources of unfreedom: poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance or over activity of repressive states. Despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers-perhaps even the majorityof people. Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty, which robs people of the freedom to satisfy hunger, or to achieve sufficient nutrition, or to obtain remedies for treatable illnesses, or the opportunity to be adequately clothed or sheltered, or to enjoy clean water or sanitary facilities. In other cases, the unfreedom links closely to the lack of public facilities and social care, such as the absence of epidemiological programs, or of organized arrangements for health care or educational facilities, or of effective institutions for the maintenance of local peace and order. In still other cases, the violation of freedom results directly from a denial of political and civil liberties by authoritarian regimes and from imposed restrictions on the freedom to participate in the social, political and economic life of the community…….”
…… really Seleucus, ki bichitra ei desh, ki bichitra ei so-called “development”……. No, No, No Nayana, I think, you may call this….. Development of freedon oy women trafficking….. Development of freedom…….