GENDER DISCRIMINATION AND AN APOLOGY

What provoked me to write an article about gender discrimination and female infanticide? My sister!! She has always been on my case about me receiving preferential treatment from my parents. I have always been nonchalant about it; naturally so as I was at the receiving end. But recently my mum remarked that I was a spoilt brat and my sister has always received so little of their attention and despite that has been an achiever. My initial reaction was I had not asked for it? Was I to blame? Giving it more thought I remembered how I used to demand attention and throw a fit if I did not get it. One instance I clearly remember was when my sister was not well and she could not attend school, I took a stance saying that if she didn’t go I would not too. So my mum packed us both off to school. I do not think she has still forgiven me for it. All my cousins and aunts have always lavished attention on me as I was the only son and my dad was also the only son of 7 siblings. But it wasn’t the same with my sister she always got subpar treatment. She sometimes got so distraught that she actually used to wish she could grow a ‘DICK’!!

The Indian society itself is a patriarchal society by nature. Even when we talk of the heydays of being a woman in India, the role of women was primarily to look after the man and the carrier of the lineage. An irony is some of the heralded women of the ages gone by had macho attributes in their personality. It is by honing these attributes they were termed to be great. They are often called great because they treaded onto the male domain to impose themselves. Why does a woman have to be compared to a man to highlight their greatness? In talking about the view about women a very saddening trend has emerged in India of late especially rural India. Pre birth sex determination India is rampant and a lucrative business.

Women are such an integral part of our lives. We cannot live without them right from the day we are born. A woman brings us into the world, bathes us, feeds us, sings us lullabies and does all our dirty work. As we get older she consoles us, delights us, talks us to us when we get sad, angry, irritated etc. as we hit puberty their roles change; our first crush, our first kiss, the first love and culminating in the sanctity of a marriage. We would do anything to woo them to win them over. And then suddenly the spark is gone. We start taking them for granted; we do not need them anymore not as a daughter not as anything. We are suddenly convinced we can make do with a male society. We do not need women anymore. A son is suddenly of primordial importance. The heir to all our family culture, the man who will be the quintessential ‘baap ka beta’ . The son who will show society what the family is all about and keep the light shining on the family legacy. The saddening part, even the women in the family favor the idea. In rural India it is more practical in nature as a woman can only marginally add to the income but a man is much more productive. The maintenance cost of a woman is very high as there are a lot of cosmetics cost, make up, an array of clothes and jewelry to provide and of course dowry. When a girl is born in the family they have to start saving right from the beginning as the bridegroom’s family will expect gifts. And also there is the added responsibility of keeping the street leeches away from your daughter. It adds up to quite a burden as opposed to a male child.

How do we change this social stigma? The most obvious would be education. Talking about education I actually came across a very well respected and educated couple from Mysore who resides in US who went all the way to Bangkok to get a sex test done. But education is important and we will have exceptions and is the way to go. The lifestyle for women in rural India must be made better or on par with the male productivity. It is already being done with the microfinance companies encouraging borrowing and entrepreneurship. Abolition of dowry must be made stringent. The theatre’s showing soft porn should be made to show hard porn too and get more of these theatres in rural areas, legalize porn. Those desperate males will have an outlet for their frustration at least. The ideas may be a bit radical, but it seems the only way to go. Cheers to a bright future for Indian women.

SORRY SISTER, IT WAS LONG DUE!!

AGRICULTURAL MNC’S AND ALCOHOLICS: AN INSIGHT INTO VALPARAI

A few weeks back me and two friends rode into a quaint and pre colonial hill station called Valparai. The town has very minimal tourists and is a haven for people who enjoy self exploratory trips and would definitely put the overrated Ooty to shame. The station is filled with a lot of tea estate holding companies who mainly export their produce. We were acquainted with a certain Mr. Abhay of Tata Tea who was courteous enough to let us stay in his house.

I was pleasantly surprised with the amenities provided for his designation (assistant manager). He had 3 people to look after his household chores, a gardener, a sweeper and a cook. All his bills right from electricity, phone up to his fuel (100 ltrs quota) were all taken care of. What’s more his CTC was around 22-25k; this seemed like my dream job. The initial infatuation faded as 3 pegs of whiskey went down with the sun. We got talking about his hobbies and how he killed time. Alcohol, phone calls, clubs and parties amongst the managers ruled the roost. The lifestyle seemed like a desperate attempt to negate boredom. The only real hobby seemed to be photography, which I noticed was prevalent amongst all the estate managers. It then occurred to me that the offered lifestyle was a legal bribe the agricultural MNC’s were onto to pave the way for people accept a lonely job. Speaking to the HGM in a party a few days later, my doubts were confirmed when he said the most important criteria in selection was if a person was disposed to a lonely life in an estate. Speaking to other managers some of them told me they started consuming alcohol only after they joined this job. When I suggested to them about such a wonderful opportunity for them to save money, they burst out laughing. They blew up all their money on alcohol and parties! Every alternate day they have a party and take turns hosting it. Their capacity for alcohol was also incredible; most of them could down a bottle easily. All the women who were married to the estate managers taught at the local schools for a paltry sum of money. They loved the parties too and were excellent hosts and conversationalists.

After a few days at Abhay’s house we went to meet the manager of Bombay Burma trading company, Mr. Prashanth. A lot of these estates have their presence around South East Asia and Africa as Mr. Prashanth informed us. We got to look around the tea factory. The wage scheme followed here was really a piece of work. The workers were paid daily wages until 3 in the evening and they could work if they wanted to after that for extra wages; so at an average they earned about 200-250 Rs a day! No wonder looking at the net I found that Valparai was ranked about 7th in the wealth index of India. They seemed to have struck quite a balance between employers and employees which is quite unheard of in India. Later on we visited another assistant manager Mr. Aiyappa. Being a close friend of mine from Madras Christian College more dark sides of the job were revealed by him as he spoke of backstabbing, laborers trying to scare him and of course rampant alcoholism. Knowing my personality it really seemed like a suicide mission in taking up this job.

I left Valparai with a really heavy heart but fully aware which job would best support me if I ever plan to write a book!!