Columnists
Young girl's longing for equal rights
> BY BERNARD GAVZER
Copyright © 2002 by The Earth Times. All rights reserved

Oh, Rukshana, Rukshana. A day may come when it is not a tragedy to be a girl, and girls will automatically go to school, and you can marry whom you wish. It won't happen through my pretend magic. But there's a change in the wind that is now moving like a whisper through the thousands of impoverished villages of India, urging: Now is the time to assert your rights. Now is the time to speak out. Now is the time to act.

It is happening among India's disenfranchised women even men in government of under-developed nations, perhaps of humanity itself, resides in the resolve that it can happen only when women have control over their lives and fertility.

I saw evidence of that looming change when I met Rukshana and adolescent girls and boys, and adults first two weeks of March. Along with other journalists, I was a guest of the US Committee for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Most of the people we saw were in three New Delhi slums Rajabazar are an estimated 100 million people living in India's urban slums alone. They're all cursed with little or no access to potable water, sanitation facilities or health care services. Most of these people were described as of the "scheduled class," the lowest, the one that used to be called "untouchables." We had arrived shortly after the torching of a train in which 58 Hindu passengers, mostly women and children, were burned to death. Enraged Hindus attacked Muslim communities across Gujarat state in rioting that claimed 815 lives by April 4. Our planned visit to Gujarat had to be abandoned.

Rukshana's day, like that of millions of other girls in poverty-laden villages and slums, is like a grueling exercise in learning how to live in hell. She sleeps on the dirt floor in the kitchen of a tiny two-story, mud-and-brick house in the village of Mewat Badas in Mahender-garth District.

There is no plumbing. Awake at 4 AM, she washes and tends to the water buffaloes. At 6 AM she cooks for the entire household of 15: four brothers, two sisters, parents, paternal grandparents, aunt, uncle and two cousins. Then she washes clothes, feeds the animals, gathers firewood, sweeps up, hand-molds cow and buffalo dung for drying as fuel, makes the evening meal, cleans up and goes to bed at 10 PM. There is no pay for her work, as is the case for more than 80 percent of Indian women, who do most of the house and farm work.

Encouraged by a UNFPA-sponsored women's rights program in her village, Rukshana somehow manages to squeeze in moments to learn to read and write. That's an achievement of note in a district in which almost 90 percent of the women are illiterate. The monumental change fostered by UNFPA depends in a large measure on "jagriti mandals," women's groups whose name literally means "forums for awakening." They are led by Sanjeevanis, or social animators.

The changes themselves are small, incremental shifts in cultural attitudes that take years to grab hold and truly begin to produce substantial change. A further measure of empowerment for India's women came as national laws were changed, mandating that women comprise one-third of the members of the Panchayat, which are local governing bodies. UNFPA sponsors village and local Indian organizations that train women how to be effective as Panchayat members. It's quite a challenge for women who have long had self-doubts about having any right to a voice in making laws and being in positions of authority.

There is great emphasis on communicating the message that basic human rights for women include the right to education, the right to control their fertility, and the right to live free from violence and neglect.

The major issues UNPFA addresses through various programs it sponsors are family planning education and services, training of birth attendants to reduce maternal and infant mortality, and enforcement of laws that will improve the status of women and enhance the availability of reproductive and other essential health services.

Other concerns are related to: arranged marriages with girls as young as 11; "dowry deaths" caused by families unhappy with the dowry from the bride's family; skills and strategies for earning money; even some karate training so women can defend themselves.

Arranged marriages are commonplace throughout India's society. Some unions are fixed in childhood, although the actual marriage takes place years later. By law, 18 is the youngest age for marriage, but that is violated often, with some marriages involving girls as young as 11.

The hunger for change finds its voice in villagers such as Angoorie, a widow in the Rewari district of Haryana. She is a Sanjeevani, an animator, and firmly says: "We are not afraid of anybody. We are strong and fearless and we speak our minds."

So, too, Stantosh Yabar, 43, from Bhugarka village, who says "I am a dangerous woman." She and some other women wrote a song that fits her militancy:

"I want to survive.

Please educate me.

I can be a doctor, a commissioner.

I can be a good leader.

Don't give preference to the boys at the expense of the girls.

We need equal opportunities."

Stantosh was married at age 11 and was so ashamed she kept herself covered through the ceremony. "That will not happen to my daughters," she said. "I will keep them in school. And they can marry at 18."

Some activists are literally forcing authorities to stop "looking the other way" on wife beatings and on the kidnapping of children for brothels. It's estimated there are two million females in India's brothels.

Roma Debabrata, a founder of a group called Stop Trafficking, Oppression and Prostitution of Children and Women (STOP), has gone on raids to rescue young girls from becoming sex slaves. "In the last year we have rescued more than 400 trafficked children," she said. "But there are thousands more, young girls being held against their will. We have put some pimps and owners of these houses in jail."

In New Delhi, during a visit to the Urivi Vikram Charitable Trust (UVCT), where adolescent girls and boys are being exposed to dozens of career training projects, I was told the young people were from different religious groups and got along quite well. In one circle of boys, there were two Muslims, a Sikh and seven Hindus. Did they not have any animosity toward one another, what with the murderous riots in Gujarat? How is it they weren't at one another's throats?

They explained they were neighbors. And, in the end, it seemed they shared something more powerful than religious division: poverty. There was nothing someone else had that you would want. Besides, they insisted, the riots were fomented by politicians.

In this nation of one billion second most populous country females for every 1,000 males. It begins with pregnancies that are terminated when it is learned the fetus is a girl. Boys get the choicest food and are catered to while their sisters perish from starvation and neglect. Seven percent of newborn infants girls rise in the number of women who undergo sterilization after the birth of a second or third child. Up until the age of 45, women have higher mortality rates than men.

The US Committee's advocacy of UNFPA and its programs for India has run into a roadblock named Christopher Smith, a Republican congressman from New Jersey who is regarded as one of Washington's most outsoken foes of abortion. Congress appropriated $34 million for the Population Fund in 2002. That money is desperately needed for the five-year plan being proposed in India. But Congressman Smith got President Bush to put a hold on the funding, contending that the Population Fund helps China in coercing abortions to meet its "one child" family policy.

François Farah, UNFPA's representative in India, repeatedly says: "We are not promoting abortions in India or anywhere else. In China, funds go only to those counties that have lifted the one-child restriction." Cheri Lovell, executive vice president of the US Committee, said "Representative Smith and his allies have concocted what they say is evidence about the alleged abortions. His claims are patently false and no evidence has ever been discovered by outside, objective sources, including the US State Department."