Even being fully aware that in the gender stakes, the female-to-male ratio is second worst in the world (0.89) after China (0.87), there is no softening the appalling nature of the story that appeared in several publications this week.
I am of course referring to the women cane cutters of drought-stricken, pitilessly hot Beed in the interior of the state, where thousands toil ceaselessly by their husbands during the cutting season at the end of the year.
The details are bald, devoid of drama and credible as a result. It is as if no embellishment is necessary, given the dire nature of the subject. This is a country personified by Bharat Mata, worshipped ferociously by hundreds of millions of men who have made the chant to her victory into a statement of nationalism.
In Beed, for between four to five months every year during the cane cutting season, women work as hard as the men. Each day they cut down between 3 and 4 tons, for which they are paid at the rate of Rs.250 per ton. At the end of the cutting period, many couples (they work with their husbands), chalk up figures of 300 tons for which they are entitled to Rs. 75,000. A joint sum for months of hard labour. This may sound like a decent sum, till you learn what the price is for many of the women in Beed. Literally the loss of their wombs.
In some villages, it is half the female cane cutter population that is womb-less. Some of these women are as young as 25 years. Usually, they have children and the decision to remove their wombs is always taken in consultation with the larger family.
Why? Because the contractors who hire them work to tightly calculated targets that must be met. And woe betide a woman who holds up these targets if she suffers from menstrual discomfort. Not only does she miss days at work (and the paltry sum ensured), she must also pay a fine of Rs.500 to the contractor! Given that this perennially rain-starved and jobless region of Maharashtra is plagued by poverty, and that cane cutting represents perhaps the only income for many families, it actually makes economic sense of many women to just have hysterectomies so that they can cut cane non-stop.
If they don’t have the money to have the operation performed, the friendly contractor is on hand to advance the money for the procedure, to be later cut from the salary earned. Not only must these women hold the cup of poison to their own lips, they must drink it down to the bitter dregs.
Against the darkness conjured up by the Beed story, the hilarity from the Congress engendered by the BJP’s carelessly proofread manifesto was irritating at best, and unseemly at its worst. Is it really so funny that it reads, “We have constituted the Women’s Security Division in the Home Ministry, and have made strict provisions for transferring the laws in order to commit crimes against women, in particular in a time-bound investigation and trail for rape”? But then, juxtapose it against the story of Beed and its womb-less women, and it is funny!
Completing this hat trick in misogyny was the equally misplaced mirth over the mysterious fingers of the “third hand” that could be seen on the waist of the old woman lovingly held by Rahul Gandhi in the INC election advertisement. You know the one I mean, so check out this particular furore. Considerable noise was made by the redoubtable Smriti Irani about Congress “crime and corruption”, as proved by the alleged photo-shopping of this image.
Turns out the photo was perfectly genuine and all that was done was perfectly legitimate, if careless, cropping, to focus on the Congress President. Truly, this is no country for women.
