Many of the candidates standing for the Gurgaon municipal council elections are women. That seems like a good thing and a sign of India's modernization. Until one digs a little deeper.
Our cook lives with her daughter in a one-room "quarter" in a building owned by a local power broker. The landlord's daughter-in-law is standing (being put up?) for election. The landlord's brother owns another such building where our domestic help lives. I think that brother's daughter-in-law is also in the fray.
Both buildings are illegal of course, and they may own several others. Almost all of the tenants are migrants who have left their villages to try to find a better life. Many of these migrants are women who work in the nearby middle-class houses.
The landlords strong-arm these poor migrants. For example, once in a while they take a month's rent and then a few days later ask for it again. Since no receipts are handed out, there is no way to contest that claim. The tenants somehow pay up again - digging into their meager savings or borrowing money - rather than risk the landlord's anger. As migrants, they often don't have their papers in order and are always at risk from the police so they have no recourse (remember the Commonwealth Games when they were mass-shipped out of the region?) Yes, this does sound like the serfdom we thought we had abolished in the villages, playing out in this urban form of zamindari.
(Incidentally and ironically, these poor migrants pay 50% more for cooking gas etc. than you and I do, because they don't have the papers to get a subsidized gas "connection" and have to buy gas from the black market. Then despite being ready to pay for power and water from the money they make from their hard work, they get yellow brackish water in buckets from a tanker and spend many hot summer nights without electricity in their rooms. I wonder how they are able to come to work each day.)
Anyway, coming back to these elections - on Friday, as the tenants stepped out to go to their jobs, they were stopped outside the building by the landlords and their henchmen. They were told that they would have to instead come with them on an electioneering march. Those that refused and went to work would have their belongings thrown out and their quarters locked. Most women complied. They marched in the hot sun for perhaps 10-15 kilometers, shouting slogans all the while. The next day their throats were so ruined they could barely speak.
One woman who defiantly went to work had left her child sleeping in the quarter. These guys pulled the child out along with her belongings and put their own lock on the room. The child had to go looking for its mother.
This is the real story behind the facade. This is how a lot of people are treated in India, like animals to be herded around. It is tragic that such situations are so complex and a product of myriad factors that we don't know how to address. Worse, when we see such a pugnacious and barbaric expression of naked power even we sometimes feel powerless in comparison.
Our cook lives with her daughter in a one-room "quarter" in a building owned by a local power broker. The landlord's daughter-in-law is standing (being put up?) for election. The landlord's brother owns another such building where our domestic help lives. I think that brother's daughter-in-law is also in the fray.
Both buildings are illegal of course, and they may own several others. Almost all of the tenants are migrants who have left their villages to try to find a better life. Many of these migrants are women who work in the nearby middle-class houses.
The landlords strong-arm these poor migrants. For example, once in a while they take a month's rent and then a few days later ask for it again. Since no receipts are handed out, there is no way to contest that claim. The tenants somehow pay up again - digging into their meager savings or borrowing money - rather than risk the landlord's anger. As migrants, they often don't have their papers in order and are always at risk from the police so they have no recourse (remember the Commonwealth Games when they were mass-shipped out of the region?) Yes, this does sound like the serfdom we thought we had abolished in the villages, playing out in this urban form of zamindari.
(Incidentally and ironically, these poor migrants pay 50% more for cooking gas etc. than you and I do, because they don't have the papers to get a subsidized gas "connection" and have to buy gas from the black market. Then despite being ready to pay for power and water from the money they make from their hard work, they get yellow brackish water in buckets from a tanker and spend many hot summer nights without electricity in their rooms. I wonder how they are able to come to work each day.)
Anyway, coming back to these elections - on Friday, as the tenants stepped out to go to their jobs, they were stopped outside the building by the landlords and their henchmen. They were told that they would have to instead come with them on an electioneering march. Those that refused and went to work would have their belongings thrown out and their quarters locked. Most women complied. They marched in the hot sun for perhaps 10-15 kilometers, shouting slogans all the while. The next day their throats were so ruined they could barely speak.
One woman who defiantly went to work had left her child sleeping in the quarter. These guys pulled the child out along with her belongings and put their own lock on the room. The child had to go looking for its mother.
This is the real story behind the facade. This is how a lot of people are treated in India, like animals to be herded around. It is tragic that such situations are so complex and a product of myriad factors that we don't know how to address. Worse, when we see such a pugnacious and barbaric expression of naked power even we sometimes feel powerless in comparison.
1 comment:
Hi Manas,
Nice blog. This is reality, these things are not new for them, they have already faced such kind of suppression, brutality and partiality in their villages and now they are facing it here at so called developed city, the only difference is here that previously they were used to live in forest now they are living at concrete jungle and that’s why they are paying for to survive here. If they refuse to do so they will be overthrow by these goons and which they don’t want at any cost at least here they have job with sure amount approximately 5k to 10k but in villages goons are forcing them to work on NAREGA with 30% commission. And daily wages is 85-100Rs and some time they got rotten grains plan called “work for food” to prevent starvation so that our country hunger index will reduce.
To address this issue…. country need long term plan for basic education which will help them to understand their rights. So that at least they can oppose at any brutality or partiality.
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