The feminisation of poverty in Bihar

By Brinda Karat

AS PART of the ongoing campaign against violence and poverty, the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) had recently organised a jeep jatha through eight districts in Bihar holding on an average five meetings a day. The participants were almost all rural women workers, mostly Dalit, with little or no land. Feminisation of poverty in India occurs as a result of the process of the intensification of poverty due to macro-economic policies and not because poor men shift the burden of poverty on to poor women. Patriarchal hierarchies, socially as well as within the family, lead to women bearing a disproportionate part of the burden. Official documents coopt the language of gender- sensitive analysis but deliberately ignore the context, in this case the current economic policies being followed by the Government. Thus the Government country paper presented at the Beijing Plus Five conference in New York mentions feminisation of poverty but ignores the evidence of creation of more poverty in the last decade of so-called economic reform. Estimates of poverty vary between the National Sample Survey which puts the increase of those below the poverty line to 70 million since 1991 to the recent Planning Commission estimate that poverty has decreased though inequality has increased.

Statistical jugglery of poverty figures helps justify the state refusal to increase budgetary provisions for the rural poor. It is also said that since only a fraction of the money budgeted actually gets to the beneficiary, why spend the money anyway? But who bears the cost of cutting state subsidies, who pays the price? During the Bihar jatha, in meeting after meeting, women spoke of extra unpaid work burdens, of decreased earnings, of cutting down on their own food, of ignoring their own ill- health because of the lack of money to pay the doctor's bill and because of the huge increase in the price of drugs. In Bihar, among poor rural families, women subsidise family survival through complex strategies of survival based on self-deprivation. They thus fill the gap created by Government cuts. This is one aspect of the feminisation of poverty.

Through the route of the jatha, we found mainly women, children and the elderly in the villages. Bihar probably has the highest number of female-headed families. Although male migration is not new particularly to the green revolution belt, in the last two years, according to the accounts given by the women we met, while migration has increased there has been little or no money sent back to the villages. In the meetings, women asked us whether there was ``some trouble in the north. Is that why our men are not sending any money?'' The reality is somewhat different. The thrust of current agricultural policies has encouraged a shift from foodgrain cultivation to cash crops, most requiring less labour. This along with increasing mechanisation of agricultural production processes has meant that Bihar migrant workers are now finding less work in Punjab.

The women take their own decisions, deal on their own with the recurring crisis of managing families with no regular income. This is not an empowering process. The women are under extreme stress, and vulnerable. Their reality shows up the irrelevance of an issue which is so popular in the cities, that of a bigger role for women in decision-making processes within the home. Here it is the other way around. There are too many decisions they have to take and too few resources. The problems of female- headed families were brought up most sharply in a meeting at a place called Runisaidpur in Sitamarhi district. This is a flood- affected area. We had to get to the block office by a small boat since the roads were flooded. Food relief supplies, a few kg of foodgrains per family, were being distributed. The entire block office compound was filled with women. They had barely eaten for the last week. The women told us that because they were on their own, they became completely exhausted rushing from one camp to another wherever they heard that relief was being supplied. Most of the huts were under water. An added problem was that of security. Lines of trucks on their way across the State were stranded on the highways which meant that the nearby villages were visited by hundreds of outsiders, truck drivers, helpers and so on. There had been incidents of sexual assault. In one case, the women had caught hold of a would-be rapist and beaten him up. After this incident, the women decided to have their own security system and several of them would group their families together for the night and take turns on the security watch.

Everywhere, women were demanding work. The NDA Government had promised at least 200 days of work a year for every poor rural family. But here waged work had clearly decreased. Most women get agricultural work for only about three months a year. The wages are dismal, ranging from one and a half kg of foodgrains, which comes to less once the chaff is removed, to Rs. eight or 12 a day. The only villages where women were getting a wage of Rs. 20 to 25 were where there were peasant or agricultural worker organisations which ensured wage payments through agitations. There was not a single village we visited where women had got work in any Government scheme. In fact, the women could not remember last when they had got work through the Government.

We were told that the public distribution system is a total shambles. In one block in Sitamarhi, the ration shop opened once in six months. In another, the shop opened for just two hours and by the time the news reached the village and women rushed there, it was already closed. In Chandauli village of Samastipur district, the ration shops open once in two months when below the poverty line (BPL) cardholders are given 20 kg of foodgrains. Thus in the Finance Minister's own home State, his promise to increase the quota of BPL families from 10 kg to 20 kg has not been implemented. When we asked a local dealer the reason, he said that there was no use in getting supplies since even if his shop was completely stocked, BPL cardholders did not have the money to buy their full quotas.

Even while we were in the jatha, news came that the Vajpayee Government had set up a committee to discuss what to do with the 44 million tonnes of foodgrains rotting in Government godowns at an annual expense of Rs. 9,000 crores. The criminality of such economics becomes evident when you match the figures with the desperation of families struggling against starvation, like the women we met all through the jatha. It would be cheaper for the Government to distribute the foodgrains free of cost, alternatively massive food-for-work schemes would ensure some relief. But the Government is more keen to comply with World Bank/WTO conditions to cut down on food subsidies.

But through the difficultes and the deprivation, what stood out most of all was the power of female resilience. In one example in Jahniharpur block of Madhubani district, women machuaries (fisherwomen) related how they had formed a group which challenged the hegemony of a local mafia gang and got control of three fish tanks in the area. In Darbhanga, in several villages women had not only played a leading role in struggles for surplus land over the ceiling but were also instrumental in defending the land. The most popular demand in these areas was that for land titles in the name of both the husband and the wife.

Bihar's politics has little or no space for these women or the issues which concern them. Although caste hierarchies have been challenged through social justice movements, conspicuously absent in these movements has been the crucial element of economic entitlements, wages and land. Absent also has been any effort for gender-based social reform and a recognition of women's contribution and role. Thus the tremendous work burden shouldered by poor women in rural Bihar, does not enhance their social status. The hope lies only in their own increasing assertion.

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