By Nitin Jugran Bahuguna
Sarpanch Maya Yadav (in sari) has helped her village, Teent, in Haryana, turn against female foeticide by educating girl children and resisting dowry demands.
Bimla Devi, 57, of Basduda village in Rewari district of Haryana is no stranger to social boycott and ridicule. Socially ostracised by all in her village, denied public services from local tradesmen and public transport operators and even brutally beaten up once while holding a women's meeting at her home, this diminutive woman has displayed hidden strength in dealing with her detractors.
Today, she is known as “Bimla Pradhan”, even though she is not an elected representative, because of her relentless efforts to secure justice for the most underprivileged in the village — women.
Whether it is domestic violence, adult education for women or promoting health and well-being of the girl child by campaigning against female foeticide, Bimla is at the forefront, often collaborating with district authorities and taking to task errant families, some of whom still harbour feelings of resentment for what they term her “interference” in matters which don't concern her.
“I don't care if I am unpopular in some quarters and now my family accepts this,” she says with a shrug. “I have faced opposition ever since I started my community activities by facilitating an adult education centre for women in my village about 20 years ago.” In a journey often fraught with tensions and threats, Bimla was instrumental in mobilising the village women to organise themselves into a group for collective action on issues affecting women's well-being. “Once, during a meeting at home, a few men armed with sticks entered and attacked us. No villager came to our rescue! Such was the level of hostility that we had to confront on a daily basis,” she recalls.
Awareness against female foeticide
Now she is on a mission to spread awareness against the heinous practice of female foeticide. “The district administration has formed a committee against female foeticide and asked for my help,” she says. But she is also critical of the authorities and questions their sincerity in tackling the issue and says: “whenever I call the committee, no one talks to me”. Giving the example of a recent case, Bimla says she found out that her neighbour's pregnant wife was planning to get an ultrasound test done to check the sex of the foetus, an unlawful act under Indian law. “I followed the couple to Rewari hospital and had to phone the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of the hospital to prevent them from getting the procedure done.”
However, the couple kept moving from one hospital to another, changing taxis to deter Bimla. “After a while, I had to give up as I ran out of money and could no longer follow them. I heard later that they had got the test done and left the village to get the female foetus aborted. Without wholehearted cooperation from the authorities and the medical community, what can a mere individual do,” she asks.
Bimla can take heart from the fact that at least one Haryana village in her district seems to have woken up to this crime against the unborn girl, and the credit for that must go to the village's formally elected female sarpanch.
Exemplary village
Bimla Devi of Basduda village is at the head of a fight
When Maya Yadav, 50, of Teent village in Rewari, was elected to the post reserved for women, she was initially indifferent to her responsibilities and let her husband manage the official duties. However, members of two women groups in the village motivated her to take interest in Panchayat activities and encouraged her to attend meetings and capacity-building initiatives facilitated by a local NGO, the Social Centre for Rural Initiative and Advancement (SCRIA).
Soon, Maya got involved in various social and developmental issues of the village. “I realised that the well-being and progress of our community could only be achieved by empowering women and protecting the rights of girl children,” she says. Towards that end, she launched gender awareness programmes at regular intervals in the village with the result that today every girl attends school.
Maya also claims that her village is the only one in the district where the sex ratio is even. This is no mean feat given that Haryana has one of the lowest gender ratios in the country with 861 women per 1,000 men, according to the 2001 Census.
She attributes this achievement to a number of factors. “In the first instance, the community rallies around parents of girls financially at the time of marriage. This prevents people from viewing the girl child as a financial burden,” she explains.
“Also, we have stopped the practice of dowry. For this, we had to actually sensitise women more than men, because collecting dowry had become something of a prestige issue for women and they would compete with each other during weddings. Now the practice of buying and displaying dowry items has stopped because we would not go to a wedding venue where we heard dowry was being collected. This in turn has helped to discourage the practice of female foeticide,” she claims.
The Teent village example has inspired women's groups across the district. Aware that in a patriarchal society violence against women starts even before they are born, many members of women's groups have sworn not to adopt this practice in their family. “We have been networking with other groups in the district and over the years have attempted to prevent this evil, on an average dealing with 15-20 cases a month,” says Bimla.
When efforts go vain
They succeed at times in preventing gender-specific abortions, but often their efforts fail, mainly because of two reasons. On the one hand, the preference for the male child is so strong that no amount of reasoning, threats or creating awareness on the societal problems arising from skewed gender ratio make any difference to the errant family,” observes Sunder Lal, Director of SCRIA, adding: “On the other hand, such abortions form a well-entrenched business with a large network of beneficiaries across a wide section of society.” The situation is difficult but it does not dishearten women like Bimla. She claims that in fact it only “inspires us women to fight even more vigorously for the right of the unborn girl child.”
© Women's Feature Service
courtesy: Business Line / Life
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