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	Electoral Governance and Democratic Citizenship: A Study on Election Commission of India ... read more...
	Contemporary Debates on Citizenship in India ... read more...
	Survey of Homebased Workers ... read more...
	Media Censorship and the Postcolonial Regulation of Sexuality and Culture ... read more...
	The Adverse Child Sex Ration in North-West India ... read more...
	Gender and Local Governance in Two Cities ... read more...
	Globalisation and Women's Work: Dissaggregate analysis of NSSO data ... read more...
	The Political and Social Economy of care in India ... read more...
	Conditions and Needs of Women Workers in Delhi ... read more...
	Heterodoxy and the idea of women as independent entities: A case study of Kannada literature in the early medieval period ... read more...
	Nationalism and B. G. Tilak ... read more...
	Multiple Vulnerabilities and Marginal Identities: Exploring Violence in the everyday lives of Women with Disabilities in the City ... read more...
	Work, Health and Family Life ... read more...
	Alternate Report on the Status of Young Child for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child ... read more...
	Assessment of Child Care Services under NREGA ... read more...
	Paradigm of Justice Delivery Mechanisms from the Perspective of Women Litigants ... read more...
	‘Old’ Self and ‘New’ Space? Women Migrants of Tamil Origin in France ... read more...
	The Family among the Banaras Weavers in the Wake of the current crisis ... read more...
	Gender and Migration ... read more...
	Women, Equality and the Republic ... read more...
	Gender, Status of Profession and Migration: A Study of Nurses from Kerala in Delhi ... read more...

Electoral Governance and Democratic Citizenship: A Study on Election Commission of India
Researcher: Anupama Roy

Contemporary Debates on Citizenship in India
Researcher: Anupama Roy

Work on a manuscript based broadly on Contemporary Debates on Citizenship in India is continuing simultaneously.  Papers emerging from this work have been presented in seminars/conferences. These include Between Encompassment and Closure: The ‘Migrant’ and the Citizen in India: The legal-constitutional language of citizenship in India shows that citizenship oscillates ambivalently between encompassment and closure. This paper maps the amendments that have taken place in the citizenship laws in India, sieving out in particular the category of the ‘migrant’, to identify moments of encompassment and closure and demonstrate the shifts in the ideological basis and institutional practices of citizenship in India.

‘Contradictory Cohabitation or Politics of Foreclusion: The IMDT Act and the Ambivalence of Citizenship’ (co-authored). Through an examination of the Illegal Migrants Determination by Tribunals Act 1983, this paper examines how the lesson of otherness is continually reproduced and re-inscribed in the practices of citizenship, through legal measures and judicial pronouncement.

Survey of Homebased Workers
Researcher: Indrani Mazumdar
 

The collaborative study with the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) on Conditions of Homebased Workers in India conducted with the support of ILO was completed in 2007. The CITU survey covered 3,300 homebased workers across 10 states. Probably the largest ever survey of homebased workers in the country, what was unique was the coverage of 4 metropolitan cities, 41 towns and 43 villages, though it was based on organizational outreach rather than any statistical sampling method.

The detailed analysis of the data generated by the survey was analysed under the following sections: 1.Gender Characteristics, 2. Industries and Sectors, 3. Incomes, hours of work and wage rates, 4. Employment Relations, 5. Markets, 6. Education and Training mechanisms, 7. Social and economic status of homebased workers, 8. Social Security, 9. Organisation, 10. Experience of Tsunami. 

Highlights of survey findings

82.5 per cent of the workers were women. 86 per cent were piece rated wage workers, i.e., home workers according to the definitions of the ILO Convention.

48 per cent of the workers gave deficit incomes as their reason for doing homebased work, another15 per cent referred to job loss or unemployment (their own or husband’s). Only 8 per cent quoted tradition or hereditary occupation, while 5 per cent quoted social and family restrictions on working. Surprisingly, only 3 per cent stated that they were working at home because they could combine work with childcare and domestic responsibilities. In many cases it would be a complex of reasons including the lack of availability or access to better quality employment, but what stood out in the tenor of the replies of the majority of workers is the harshness of the pressure of poverty.

Textiles and related products (34 per cent), food processing (14 per cent), and beedi (11 per cent) were the largest industry segments. Particularly striking was the fact that among women, the proportions of textile workers were less than for males. The average monthly earnings from homebased work was found to be as low as Rs.538/-. 

Much of the literature on homebased work has been focused on the export connection. However, this survey revealed that only 5 per cent of the workers were working for export markets. Beedi and agarbatti were the most completely integrated into a national supply and marketing network. Food processing also appears to be moving towards wider markets. Piece rates paid to beedi workers were exactly the same in Bengal and Delhi, indicating integration into a unified national market.  On the other hand, some of the traditional occupations – bamboo/palm leaf products, pottery, etc. were almost solely within localised circuits. Handloom production for local markets was however shown to be virtually extinct. Somewhat surprisingly, even religious products such as sacred ashes were destined for other places. 

Media Censorship and the Postcolonial Regulation of Sexuality and Culture
Researcher: Karen Gabriel

Work on this project has begun analyzing relevant material, including a review of laws, policies, Acts, judgments etc. that pertain to the study of censorship within the dual contexts of sexuality and culture. The immediate agenda that guided the examination of material was to arrive at a theoretical framework for framing censorship as a conglomeration of intersecting and historically implicated agencies, sites, discourses, practices and apparatuses. The two questions focused on specifically within this context were ‘why sexuality?’ and ‘why the media?’ Typically, these questions had to be historicized and understood more precisely within their many and changing contexts.

Television and cinema are the two main media under exploration. This has involved looking at their histories as media per se, and, at the history of their relations with the state. Limited comprehensive or systematized secondary material is available on the former. Some of the latter is explicit; but much of it is to be culled out and deduced from the documentation available.

Since the industrial and institutional aspects of these are vital to this study,  field work is an integral part of the research. Members of the relevant media industries have been contacted who will assist in and enable the collection of material and the formation of a set of perspectives that would guide the theoretical framework.

The contemporary location of the study does not foreclose an examination of the colonial period in the cases of cinema and the field of the sexual (the historical section of the project is quite considerable and indispensable). The discourses that determine both representation and sexuality have roots that predate coloniality, and subsequently also have a complex relation with colonial and post-independence processes. Two papers on the study and its findings (one on the history and another on the institutional structures) are being currently planned.

The Adverse Child Sex Ration in North-West India
Researcher: Mary E. John

The collaborative study on the adverse child sex ratio has been taken forward through the publication of the Report “Planning Families, Planning Gender: The Adverse Child Sex Ratio in Selected Districts of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab” by Books for Change.  The report summarizes the main findings as follows: A introductory chapter on the nature of the problem and the research methodology of the study; a chapter providing a site-wise analysis; a chapter on the strategies and technologies of planning families and issues of agency; a chapter discussing the structural contexts of adverse sex ratios; and a concluding chapter with main findings, a brief discussion of government policies and possible interventions.

The plan is to translate the report into Hindi and Punjabi, and to hold a dissemination workshop in 2009-10. A separate book is also planned.

The team of researchers includes Ravinder Kaur, Rajni Palriwala and Saraswati Raju, and the final phase of support comes from IDRC.

Gender and Local Governance in Two Cities
Researcher: Mary E. John

This study was initiated while the researcher was in the Women’s Studies Programme at JNU, and concluded during 2007-08 in the form of a lead article in EPW (September 2007).  The study focused on reservations based on caste and gender in urban local bodies, which have been relatively neglected in the face of the strong identification of decentralization with the revival of the panchayats.  Drawing from 134 interviews among men and women councillors in the Delhi Municipal Corporation and the Bangalore City Corporation, significant differences emerged between the two municipalities, including their caste and gender politics.  The study focussed on two interrelated issues, the problem of so-called “proxy” women and the “critical mass” rationale for reservations – whether for women or other excluded groups.  While the proxy issue is far more complex than what existing critiques would allow, the question of whether women constitute a political identity or force has no easy answers.  Moreover, the urban structures of local government offer several challenges compared to that of the panchayats, including the dominance of political parties, the high stakes – including financial – of the municipal system, the influential role of various organisations and local leaders, and the career paths of the councillors themselves.  Women’s organisations, among others, have shown much less interest in interacting with urban councillors, given some of these complexities.  And yet, the study suggests that the urban situation might hold important lessons for thinking about the relationships between women, politics and power.

Globalisation and Women's Work:Dissagregate analysis of NSSO data
Researcher: Neetha Narayana Pillai

 

This is an ongoing study which analyses the employment pattern of women in the context of structural changes in the economy with a view to identify the emerging areas of women’s work and to outline some of the new developments or changes that are taking place.  It focuses on specific sectors/sub- sectors which are perceived as potential/emerging areas of women’s employment, which would enable in-depth probing into sectoral specific employment issues of women and thus could be linked to the larger macro economic transformations.  Based on the suggestions during a presentation of the findings the scope of the study was extended to take into account factors such as religion and caste, which are important parameters for analyzing women’s work. The same was undertaken during 2008-09. 

A number of papers based on the data analysis have been presented in various seminars. Two of these articles are published and two others have been finalized for publication.  One Occasional paper has been published. A second Occasional paper on the caste and religious identity dimensions of women’s employment is under revision. 

The Political and Social Economy of care in India
Researcher: Neetha Narayana Pillai

 

This is an ongoing study conducted at the behest of the UNRISD Programme on Gender and Development. The objectives of the study are to understand a) the different institutional sites -- states, markets, families/households, and communities -- where care takes place; b) to see how the provision of care in all these sites is distributed by gender and; c) how the provision of care [both paid and unpaid] relates to poverty and social exclusion, and to state policies to address these. The focus of the study is on the care for children.

The findings of the study are to be brought out as a report consisting of six chapters. Of these, four chapters have been completed and are accessible from the UNRISD website. The chapters on Social Policy and Paid Care Workers have been completed during the past year and were presented at a seminar organized by UNRISD. The remaining two chapters are nearing completion and the final report will be submitted to UNRISD by July 2009. The chapter on the ‘Analysis of Time Use Data’ has been finalized for publication as a chapter for an edited book to be published by Routledge. The other two chapters are also being reworked for publication as articles for the International Labour Review and Economy and Society during 2010.

This is a joint study with Rajni Palriwala of Delhi University.

Conditions and Needs of Women Workers in Delhi
Researchers: Neetha Narayana Pillai and Indrani Mazumdar

The major objectives of the study are to: 1. Undertake an in depth analysis of the various factors that contribute to women workers’ specific vulnerabilities and to discriminatory and exploitative practices (including sexual exploitation) in five important segments of the female workforce. 2. Identify the specific and practical needs for enhancing protection of women workers in these segments, particularly in the private sector. 3. Review and explore the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of available mechanisms and practices currently used for redressal in relation to sexual harassment in the workplace and the reasons for this. 4. Prepare a series of guidelines towards evolving more effective mechanisms for social protection and redressal of grievances of women workers.

The study is being carried out for the Delhi Commission for Women. The study is nearing completion and a draft report would be submitted to DCW shortly.

Heterodoxy and the idea of Women as independentEntities: A Case Study of Kannada Literature in the early Medieval Period
Researcher:  Parimala V. Rao

The study attempts to contextualize the representation of women in early Kannada literature in relation to sources from inscriptions.  The period envisaged is from 850-1250 AD, and has received grant support from the ICHR.  During 2008-9 several archival visits were made in May and December 2008 and the analysis of key Kannada texts has begun.  However, since the researcher has taken up a new position, a request has been made to put the project on hold for one year due to teaching commitments.

Nationalism and B. G. Tilak
Researcher: Parimala Rao

As part of a parallel project on nationalism and the role of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a  paper ‘Nationalism and the Visibility of Women in Public Space: Tilak’s Criticism of Rakhmabai and Ramabai’ for the journal the Indian Historical Review is being prepared.

Multiple vulnerabilities and Marginalidentities:  exploring violence in the everyday lives of  Women with Disabilities
Researcher: Renu Addlakha

This study seeks to map the everyday lives of a representative sample of women with disabilities in Delhi. Using a broad operational definition of violence extending beyond molestation, rape, dowry and abuse to incorporate the whole range of social, economic, cultural and sexual discriminations and prejudice that undercut the lives of persons with disabilities, the project aims to unravel what it means to be a woman with a disability at home, and in various public institutional settings.
 

Fieldwork initiated during the preceding year was carried forward. Using purposive and snowball sampling methods, multiple in-depth interviews were conducted with about 65 informants and over 25 case studies completed. The focus during this phase was on interviewing women with disabilities engaged in the informal sector. In order to highlight gender dimensions more fully, case studies of a small number of men with disabilities are also being done.

Some of the initial findings of the study are that disability as an axis of difference appears to transcend other sociological parameters including caste, class and religion in the everyday lives of informants, validating the conceptualisation of disability as a master status or identity construct. This, however, does not undermine the important role of other socio-demographic variables in the formulation of the disability experience as such. Another interesting idea emerging is that their comparatively better educational, employment and marital terms notwithstanding, men with disabilities express more psychological distress and greater levels of dissatisfaction due to their disability than their female counterparts, highlighting the challenges to masculinity posed by disability. With regard to the relationship between violence and inequality, informants expressed even more reluctance to discuss this than sexuality. All of these demonstrate the need to understand how oppression and subjugation are cognitively configured and affectively perceived by subaltern groups as they grapple with both the physical impairment and social prejudice that frame their everyday lives.

Work, Health and Family Life: (A Study of home based Agarbatti Workers in Gaya district of Bihar with Special Reference to Women from Muslim and Dalit community)
Researcher:  Sabiha Hussain
 

The Project Report ‘Gender, Work and Community: A Study of Agarbatti workers from Muslim and Dalit community has been substantively revised and submitted in the form of a report.  The different chapters in the Report are as follows:
Chapter 1:          Introduction
Chapter 2:          Women’s Work, Health and Family Life: Shifting Paradigms
Chapter 3:          Gender Work and Community: Muslim Women in the Indian Economy
Chapter 4:          Respondents and Area Profile
Chapter 5:          Women’s Quest for Workers’ Identity
Chapter 6:          Our Work Matters Not Our Health
Chapter 7:          Gender, Work and Social Status
Chapter 8:          Agarbatti Workers:  A Tale of Woe
Chapter 9:          Conclusion and Suggestions

Alternate Report on the Status of Young Child for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
Coordinator:  Savitri Ray

In the past one year, FORCES has completed the Alternative Citizen’s Report to be presented at the UN Child Rights Convention, given that the issue of Early Childhood Care and Development is relatively marginalized in the context of reporting under the CRC.  The UN Committee has also observed decreased funding allocations by the Indian government to social services, declines in Infant and Maternal Mortality Rates, as well as in the health and educational status of young children. The Report is the outcome of various consultations, organized by FORCES at the regional level in Lucknow, Ranchi, Chennai and Guwahati. It consists of commissioned chapters providing a Critical Review of Programmes and Policies, a Review of Budgetary Allocations, the Status of Health and Nutrition, Early Childhood Education, the Social Economy of Care, the Predicament of the Girl Child, and annexures which include the situation of children in northeast India, in the capital region of Delhi and other important data.  A draft report was also shared at the national consultation in Delhi.

Assessment of Child Care Services under NREGA
Coordinator:  Savitri Ray

The other programme initiated by FORCES as part of research and advocacy is an assessment of child care services under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. NREGA is the only Act in the country that legalizes support for childcare (for children under six) in the unorganized sector, by including provisions for crèches and the availability of safe drinking water. FORCES feels that these provisions require more attention. The provision of crèches at work sites, employment of a helper/ Dai, access to drinking water and medical facilities and even the use of child labour at work sites must be thoroughly probed.

FORCES is collaborating with state partners to conduct this study in three states, viz Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Rajasthan.

Paradigm of Justice Delivery Mechanisms from the Perspective of Women Litigants: Empowerment or Victimisation?
Researcher: Shalu Nigam

This project looked at the problems faced by women litigants in their attempts to obtain justice through the legal system and a draft report of the study has been prepared.

The study concentrated on an analysis of the narratives of women who, as victims of domestic violence, approach the courts under Section 498A of the IPC.

Through their experiences the processes and functioning of state institutions becomes visible.  The broad findings indicate that while the law has provided a unique context for women to negotiate claims of injustice, its concrete functioning disqualifies their experiences of violence.  It is the institution of marriage rather than the victim that is at the heart of protection by the legal machinery constituted by the police, lawyers and the judiciary, and others involved in the actual implementation of the legal process.  Further, procedural lacunae often have the effect of re-victimising the complainant who is compelled to surrender herself before the authority of the law.  While there is ample scope for the subjectivity of the agents of the law in its actual operation, women’s agency and her need for practical solutions are overshadowed – at most the system provides for punishment.  Finally, the study revealed that far from a growing misuse of the provisions of Section 498A as the public is being led to believe, the law is severely under-utilised, with existing impediments performing a powerful demotivating function.

In the face of the new Domestic Violence Prevention Act of 2005 that has attempted to address some of the problems in the prior law, the study will therefore provide a benchmark regarding problems in the prior structures of laws meant to provide justice to women litigants.

‘Old’ Self and ‘New’ Space? Women Migrants of Tamil Origin in France
Researcher: Sreelekha Nair

The researcher is on extra ordinary leave (October 2007-June 2008) to pursue a project of nine months as Hermes Post Doctoral Fellow at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, attached to Centre national recherché scientifique.

This study will form a complement to the larger study on nurses from Kerala in Delhi which is being completed.

The Family Among the Banaras Weavers in the Wake of the Current Crisis
Researcher: Vasanthi Raman

The monograph deals with the impact of the economic crisis on the families of the Banaras weavers. The crisis is the outcome of a set of policies that specifically affected the sari industry and has brought about sweeping changes in its very structure, visible since 2004. a) The artisanal cottage industry has been virtually destroyed, with thousands of handlooms rendered dormant, throwing lakhs of weavers out of work. This has been accompanied by the proliferation of powerlooms, increasing mechanisation and the introduction of computerised embroidery machines; b) There is large-scale migration out of the city to other weaving centres, largely based on powerlooms. The crisis  has led to a fall in the wage rates for many processes, such as dyeing, post-loom operations and embroidery etc.; c) The effect on the weavers’ families and gender relations therein is no less, especially for women who till recently were part of family labour and are now forced to work for wages; d) The changed structure of the entire industry has implications for Hindu-Muslim relations and more importantly for the very identity of Benares as one which has traditionally been a cottage industry based city.

Women and Migration: Negotiating Rights
Researcher: Indu Agnohotri, Indrani Mazumdar and Neetha N.

The objectives of this project are to explore women's experiences of internal migration; analyse the direction of changes effected in their personal and work lives; and identify the new possibilities and tensions generated by migration processes, including its impact on family relations, economic structures, and a broad range of citizenship rights. The focus of the research is to identify the gender impact and socio-economic contexts of labour migration from source to destination and onwards, especially employment relations and conditions of work in the labour regimes where migrant women workers are concentrated; contemporary features with regard to  associative migration by women in rural to rural as well as rural to urban migration streams; the changing contours/ social outcomes of migration for marriage; and the response of the law, citizenship and policy frameworks to the problems and needs of women as migrants at source, destination and circulation points.

During the period under review, the central research team has

        completed a pilot run designed to test field survey questionnaires in Baoli village, district Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh;

        formulated, tested, and then finalized the questionnaires for field studies after meeting with the Central Advisory Committee (CAC). These now include separate questionnaires for households and for individual migrants;

        located and identified sites and personnel for field studies across six states in the country;

        undertaken direct preliminary quick surveys across a wide swathe of areas in the process of selecting the sites, bringing new experiences and insights into the ongoing secondary as well as primary field research activities. On average, some ten sites per region are being envisaged although some of the larger regions may have more and smaller regions may have less;

        trained field investigators for 15 sites in southern and eastern India, and monitored the progress in 13 field sites where surveys have already begun;  these trainings involved trips to Tamilnadu, 6^th April to 14^th April 2008; Rourkela, Sundergarh District, Orissa, 3^rd May to 8^th May 2008; Kerala and Karnataka, 7^th November – 15^th November 2008; Kolkata, 1^st -5^th December 2008 and Mumbai, 10^th -14^th December 2008.

        prepared the ground for field surveys in 10 other sites where surveys are to begin immediately after the general elections 2009;

        consolidated some of the notes, observations and insights gained from field visits in the form of an internal report for the project.

        Two regional consultations were held in this period drawing upon academics, activists, and policy-makers.  The first consultation for the southern region was held at Chennai, 5-6^th January 2009 covering the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and southern Karnataka.

        The second consultation for the eastern region comprising West Bengal, Orissa and upper Assam was held at Kolkata, 17-18^th January 2009.

            The pilot survey of Baoli among brick kiln workers highlighted some issues for future follow up – conditions of work that border on bondage, the high proportion of Scheduled Caste and landless among migrant households, and the phenomenon of long distance marriages or ‘faraway brides’ without dowry.

Detailed analysis of recent NSSO surveys (however inadequate and out of date) has also been initiated for the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Women, Equality and the Indian Republic
Researcher: Indu Agnihotri

The project for the compilation of documents with regard to the above project, currently under extension from the Ministry of Women and Child Development since 2007, has been taken forward.  Four more volumes – Rural Women’s Struggle for Visibility edited by Nirmala Buch, The Lineaments of a Population Policy in India edited by Mohan Rao, and two volumes on Women and the Law in Colonial India: Continuities and Discontinuities edited by Indu Agnihotri have been passed on to the Ministry.  The four volumes with Pearson publishers are awaiting final ratification from the Ministry in order to be published.

Gender, Status and Migration of Malayali Nurses in Delhi
Researcher:  Sreelekha R.Nair

The manuscript titled ‘Gender, Status and Migration of Malayali Nurses in Delhi’, is being revised for publication, and has been organized around seven main chapters. While the introductory chapter deals with the review of literature and questions of methodology, the second chapter looks at the development of nursing as a modern profession in Kerala within colonial and post independence contexts. Questions of status have been critical to the discourses around nursing ever since its inception, which are addressed in chapter three. The fourth chapter examines the circumstances in which the respondents have chosen nursing as a means of livelihood and as a profession, and how migration is built into this choice. The fifth chapter examines the processes of migration, including the social networks that enable their search for work and residence in Delhi. Delhi, it is understood from the interviews, offers a different level of experience as part of the diasporic Malayali community. Their everyday existence as migrant women workers shapes nurses’ relationships to the gender politics of their community, as well as to the localities within which they live.