I went with some of my co-workers to Shinur, near Baroda (eastern part of Gujarat). This region of Gujarat is beautiful – lush and green, with willow-like trees bending over winding roads and beautiful lakes. So different from the dry, dusty north part of Gujarat where my last field visit was or the industry heavy district of Ahmedabad, where I live. Shinur is a quaint, old small town right on the infamous Narmada river, where our field workers’ office is located. We met with the local police there to better sensitize them to Dalit rights and Dalit-protective legislation. Given the good relationship Navsarjan’s human rights defenders have developed with the local police, they seemed pretty receptive to us.
We then visited a Dalit and adivasi (tribal) community in a small nearby village to meet with their panchayat – the village governing body. Sitting under the village pavilion waiting for the members of the panchayat and the rest of the community to arrive, I almost couldn’t believe I was there. After having written so many papers involving the strengths and weaknesses of this localized governing structure, it seemed unreal to me that I was going be to sitting with one to discuss the issues this villages was facing.
The sarpanch (the leader of the panchayat) there is currently a woman – one of the strengths of the panchayat system. Both because reserved seats for women on a panchayat are constitutionally mandated and because localized governance structures are more accessible and relevant to the lives of poor, rural women, it’s not unusual to find women in a position of power here. But it was funny because even though the panchayat runs under this woman’s leadership, she was very shy around us, and more of the men answered our questions before she would. But when they spoke, it appeared to me that they actually did respect her and her ability to lead their village decision-making body.
It is an agricultural community in the sense that most, if not all, of the people in this village work as agricultural laborers on the Patels’ (the upper-caste*) farms. For the longest time, they were receiving no more than 20 rupees (~ USD 0.50) /day from the Patels for their work – about a third of the legally mandated minimum wage. While there exists a law protecting Dalit and adivasi ownership of land, most of the land allocated to these marginalized communities is uncultivable, forcing them to toil away as laborers on the upper-caste farms in order to provide for themselves and their families. Their days would last 12 hours, and during the dry season, the men would have to go and water the farms after work hours—a task they received no extra wages for.
The Patels got around the minimum wage law and its reporting requirements by keeping registers of false wages and having their Dalit and adivasi laborers, who are illiterate, give them thumb print on them certifying the amount they were getting paid. Such tricks are almost as old as time, but my mother had an interesting comment to make on this fact when I talked to her later that week. When the Patels served mostly as agricultural laborers on the Shahs’ farms a long time ago, they had received the same treatment the Patels are now meting out on Dalits and adivsasis. I guess in this world you either have one of two initial instincts: you can either learn from the pain you suffered and prevent that from happening to someone else, or believe that what you suffered was the natural order of things, and now that you’ve risen above it, it’s time for someone else to have to go through it. Depending on the context, many of us like the Patels’ in this situation follow the latter, whether we’d like to admit it or not….
When Navsarjan found out about their situation, they had stepped in and helped the community organize. Feeling empowered, the community went on strike and stood their ground in front of their employers. As a result, their work hours decreased and their wages increased to 50 rupees/day. While their wages are more than double what they used to be, because of inflation and the fact that 50 rupees/day still comes out to only a little more than USD 1/day, the families of this village are still struggling to survive.
But picture is not so bleak. Empowerment is, for the lack of a better word, incredibly powerful. This village’s success story has spread to other similarly-situated communities. While they were on strike, their neighboring villages shared their grains for them to live off of. Partly out of sheer human compassion I’m sure, but also partly due to the fact that I think that victims of a situation feel empowered when they see others like them fighting against it. Since hearing this village’s success in getting higher wages, other villages have begun to organize themselves to do the same.
But even within the community, the empowerment of the adults was quietly observed and adopted by their children. A group of middle-school aged girls and boys came and shared with us their stories of discrimination by the Patel children and teachers in the neighboring community. They told us how if they rode their bikes through the Patel village, the Patel kids would beat them up, and how in schools the teachers would force them to make tea, and do other chores rather than schoolwork. But then they too began slowly standing up for their rights, and going to the police to report this kind of abuse and harassment. Since then, the harassment has decreased and the teachers have begun to respect their right to education (though, grudgingly, I’m sure). This empowerment is also partly the result of these Bhimshalas that Navsarjan set up in such communities, where the children get proper tuition (tutoring) after school from Navsarjan volunteers – apart from regular lessons, as in the school I described in an earlier post, they’re taught to value themselves higher than their society does. The ability of these kids to now stand up for their rights at an age when most kids don’t even know they have rights shows that the strength of human rights education should never be underestimated…
*While I refer to the Patels as “upper-caste”, I mean as relative to the Dalits, those falling below the caste system. However, within the caste system, the Patels are actually pretty low.
We then visited a Dalit and adivasi (tribal) community in a small nearby village to meet with their panchayat – the village governing body. Sitting under the village pavilion waiting for the members of the panchayat and the rest of the community to arrive, I almost couldn’t believe I was there. After having written so many papers involving the strengths and weaknesses of this localized governing structure, it seemed unreal to me that I was going be to sitting with one to discuss the issues this villages was facing.
The sarpanch (the leader of the panchayat) there is currently a woman – one of the strengths of the panchayat system. Both because reserved seats for women on a panchayat are constitutionally mandated and because localized governance structures are more accessible and relevant to the lives of poor, rural women, it’s not unusual to find women in a position of power here. But it was funny because even though the panchayat runs under this woman’s leadership, she was very shy around us, and more of the men answered our questions before she would. But when they spoke, it appeared to me that they actually did respect her and her ability to lead their village decision-making body.
It is an agricultural community in the sense that most, if not all, of the people in this village work as agricultural laborers on the Patels’ (the upper-caste*) farms. For the longest time, they were receiving no more than 20 rupees (~ USD 0.50) /day from the Patels for their work – about a third of the legally mandated minimum wage. While there exists a law protecting Dalit and adivasi ownership of land, most of the land allocated to these marginalized communities is uncultivable, forcing them to toil away as laborers on the upper-caste farms in order to provide for themselves and their families. Their days would last 12 hours, and during the dry season, the men would have to go and water the farms after work hours—a task they received no extra wages for.
The Patels got around the minimum wage law and its reporting requirements by keeping registers of false wages and having their Dalit and adivasi laborers, who are illiterate, give them thumb print on them certifying the amount they were getting paid. Such tricks are almost as old as time, but my mother had an interesting comment to make on this fact when I talked to her later that week. When the Patels served mostly as agricultural laborers on the Shahs’ farms a long time ago, they had received the same treatment the Patels are now meting out on Dalits and adivsasis. I guess in this world you either have one of two initial instincts: you can either learn from the pain you suffered and prevent that from happening to someone else, or believe that what you suffered was the natural order of things, and now that you’ve risen above it, it’s time for someone else to have to go through it. Depending on the context, many of us like the Patels’ in this situation follow the latter, whether we’d like to admit it or not….
When Navsarjan found out about their situation, they had stepped in and helped the community organize. Feeling empowered, the community went on strike and stood their ground in front of their employers. As a result, their work hours decreased and their wages increased to 50 rupees/day. While their wages are more than double what they used to be, because of inflation and the fact that 50 rupees/day still comes out to only a little more than USD 1/day, the families of this village are still struggling to survive.
But picture is not so bleak. Empowerment is, for the lack of a better word, incredibly powerful. This village’s success story has spread to other similarly-situated communities. While they were on strike, their neighboring villages shared their grains for them to live off of. Partly out of sheer human compassion I’m sure, but also partly due to the fact that I think that victims of a situation feel empowered when they see others like them fighting against it. Since hearing this village’s success in getting higher wages, other villages have begun to organize themselves to do the same.
But even within the community, the empowerment of the adults was quietly observed and adopted by their children. A group of middle-school aged girls and boys came and shared with us their stories of discrimination by the Patel children and teachers in the neighboring community. They told us how if they rode their bikes through the Patel village, the Patel kids would beat them up, and how in schools the teachers would force them to make tea, and do other chores rather than schoolwork. But then they too began slowly standing up for their rights, and going to the police to report this kind of abuse and harassment. Since then, the harassment has decreased and the teachers have begun to respect their right to education (though, grudgingly, I’m sure). This empowerment is also partly the result of these Bhimshalas that Navsarjan set up in such communities, where the children get proper tuition (tutoring) after school from Navsarjan volunteers – apart from regular lessons, as in the school I described in an earlier post, they’re taught to value themselves higher than their society does. The ability of these kids to now stand up for their rights at an age when most kids don’t even know they have rights shows that the strength of human rights education should never be underestimated…*While I refer to the Patels as “upper-caste”, I mean as relative to the Dalits, those falling below the caste system. However, within the caste system, the Patels are actually pretty low.
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