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Protective legislations

Our early experiences in policy making in the women's movement were basically making demands to bring in new legislations to protect the rights of women or give them new rights. An early intervention by the autonomous women's movement in 1980 was the demand to change the law related to custodial rape. A young tribal woman Mathura was raped by armed policemen in a lock up in Maharashtra and the men went free because the judge ruled that she had consensual sex since there were no marks of resistance! This miscarriage of justice set up a hue and cry across the country. Though there was no single women's movement in the country, small groups of women across the country took up the issue and petitioned government for a change in law.

The first salvo was fired by a group of eminent lawyers such as Lotika Sarkar, Prof Upendra Bakshi and others who addressed the Supreme Court demanding immediate changes in the law as well as interpretation of law. The autonomous women's movement though nascent and dispersed throughout the country (perhaps because of this) could set up a high profile campaign. Due to their vocal demands, linkages with university students willing to take to the streets and a friendly media we were successful. Women activists in the media played an important role in highlighting the issue and debating it. Equally if not more important was the fact that luminaries from the legal profession were involved in the campaign. While young women could be written off as hysterical it was not possible for the government to write off eminent men and women who are considered pillars of society. A new law came into place, which recognized the responsibility of custodians of the state and provided stringent punishment of up to ten years imprisonment in case they violated women.

Throughout the eighties a series of legislative changes took place due to the campaigns taken up by the women's movement. Some of these were Dowry Prohibition Act, Law Prohibiting Pornography, Section 498A, which recognized family violence, etc. The Sati Prohibition Act and others followed. What characterized the law making was that if the movement demanded ABCD, the system responded by providing EFGH. The result was that the enacted laws were inoperable and did not fulfill their mandate. An example is the Dowry Prohibition Act. This Act did not punish only the guilty taker. The Dowry giver as well as taker was both criminalized. Given the social system we are in, it was quite clear that it was a dead law. Over the last few decades there may be a handful of cases where the concerned young woman may have lodged a complaint against her prospective bridegroom. In case of harassment after marriage, to file a complaint the bride's father would have to admit that he had given dowry and that itself was a criminal act.

The movement from the late seventies campaigned against the use of harmful drugs, particularly, invasive contraceptives such as Norplant and NET-en. The former was an anti-buse implanted under the skin, to prevent contraception for five years, the latter an injectable. However it was also contraindicated in a number of cases such as liver dysfunction etc. The trials of the drug needed patient follow up for a period of at least two years. One of the drugs had to be introduced on the fifth day of the menstrual cycle otherwise it would cause immense disturbance in menstrual cycles and ongoing bleeding. Though research pointed to health hazards for women, the system's response to the campaign was extremely callous. Senior government officials would point out that pregnancies carried higher risks of mortality! Stree Shakthi Sanghatana, Hyderabad, Saheli Resource Centre for Women, Delhi and Vimal Balasubramaniam a journalist from Hyderabad took the matter to the Supreme Court of India. Our demand was that Net-en should not be introduced into the public health system considering its total inadequacies in terms of screening at-risk patients and operational difficulties given the poor status of our public health system in rural areas. Due to the technical nature of the debate the Court did not conclude the matter in any clear way. The matter was pending for more than 20 years. Meanwhile the government decided that it was too expensive to introduce them into the public system and withdrew its plans. However injectables are now available to middleclass women over the counter.

The mainstream scientific community played a dubious role in not condemning the use of the drug. When we (activists in the movement) researched the health implications, it was found that trials of the drug had produced cancer among beagles. When this fact was taken to the notice of the ICMR they proclaimed that beagles were not the right experimental animals, denying that they were the basis for ongoing plans to introduce the contraceptive in India. What we find is that mainstream thinking - that population must be controlled at any cost - did not allow for any rational debate. I find a parallel in our current efforts to stop GM crops. The hype about need to increase food production dramatically and four percent growth in agriculture does not allow an opportunity to explore alternatives.

One of the key demands of the women's movement was that all contraceptives should be user controlled and not provider controlled but we failed in the task. Today in rural AP young women are "sterilized" by the age of 21 unlike in any developed country and prefer it to using other means of contraceptives.

The movement was not able to ground any large-scale health movement, which created alternative practice because of which the coercive policies continued though cushioned by the velvet of micro-credit today. Of course the forced family planning campaigns stopped after a massive backlash from the public. The lesson we learned is that for coercive policies to change we need a massive mobilization in the community and political action. It is not enough to appeal to reason, good sense or justice.

Double speak and double do

The Muslim Women's Protection Act, popularly known as the Shah Bano case, did exactly the opposite of what it stated. It took away the right to maintenance of divorced Muslim woman and left her destitute at the mercy of her own family who may be very poor themselves or the Wakf Board. Though the women's movement campaigned vigorously against the proposed legislation the battle was lost as it was pitted against religious leaders and so called secular political leaders whose base was caste and communal identity politics.

An important lesson for policy making was to understand the need for legitimacy -------who are the legitimate representatives of the community? Whose voice counts? With the existing gender equations, obviously women in the community could not speak out. The voices of women from other communities were seen as divisive and could not count. With the rise of the BJP and fundamental ideology the demand of the movement for a Common Civil Code based on gender justice was withdrawn.

Currently we see parallels in our Campaign demands to ban GM seeds leading to equally distorted responses from the state government. While we had been demanding a ban, and the state government made concessions to introduce NPM on a large scale, it also demanded a reduction in the prices of GM cottonseeds, which would lead to an increase in usage.

Lobbying to increase sensitivity to gender issues in Watershed management

As member of the CAPART committee promoting watershed development I was quite active in pursuing the possibility of changing norms to give women more visibility, control and benefits. Mr. Anil Shah was one member who took up the issue and we did try to introduce new norms. After the process went on for a while we were told that the norms could not be changed because they had to be in line with Ministry of Agriculture guidelines etc. The learning from our intervention was two fold. One, that we need a political process to bring the necessary changes. Secondly we could leave the policy in place and change the practice. In several national meetings the issues were taken up and while orally people in power agreed to make the changes nothing happened. Partly the reason for non- action I would say was a lack of grass root mobilization demanding changes.

Change in Adoption Policy at state level

Gramya was able to bring about changes in State rules related to relinquishment of children to adoption agencies and introduce a ban on international adoptions. This was possible due to a combination of very high level of media campaign, working together across party lines and personal investigation. Though very high-level criminals were involved, including family of two ex chief ministers, one ex Woman and Child Welfare Minister, and the wife of the Director General of Police we were able to get the government to ACT. Due to lack of push we were not able to be equally effective at the Central level.

Personally I feel that certain policy changes come about after years of lobbying and demonstrating alternative practice. Civil Society needs the stamina to stay the course and continuously hammer away at the need to change. The NPM effort is a good example. Perhaps SRI cultivation will be another. Recently I also came to know that the State government is planning to introduce vocational education in schools and wanted to visit Deccan Development Society. Though the actual changes may not be exactly as we visualized they are for the better.

Gramya Resource Centre for Women

Some Readings: Changing the Stream