Indian Journal of Gender Studies

http://ijg.sagepub.com Mahila Sanghas as Feminist Groups: The Empowerment of Women in Coastal Orissa
Jo-Anne Everingham Indian Journal of Gender Studies 2002; 9; 43 DOI: 10.1177/097152150200900103 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ijg.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/1/43

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Mahila Sanghas as Feminist Groups: The Empowerment of Women in Coastal Orissa

JO-ANNE EVERINGHAM

With increasing focus on the place of women in development by multilateral agencies, donor countries and non-governmental organisations, various strategies of intervention are employed. One such intervention results in poor illiterate women in Orissa, redefining their position in contrast to the dominant discourses and gender ideology of state, religion and economy, to over-

culturally enshrined powerlessness. From the observation of the work of the Peoples Rural Education Movement (PREM), and the womens organisations and credit unions they support and foster it is clear that such womens groups are appropriately understood as feminist in that they have claimed the right to speak for themselves (and those with whom they are attempting to change the social order); conceptualised an alternative social order and defined for themselves alternative social, political and economic activities within it; are challenging the mass of constructed ideas, values and myths around their gender; and are also challenging the social construction of male-female dualism and the ways in which it is reinforced. Their activities are considered in terms of Kristevas three tiers of feminist thought: liberal feminism, radical feminism and symbolic-order post-structural feminism.
come

For the first two development decades gender issues were conspicuous by their absence from the development agenda and women, almost invisible to development planners, were increasingly marginalised by the development process. Women in Development (WID) has been an issue since 1975. The ensuing decades have witnessed the gradual adoption of the

WID rhetoric and three UN conferences on women. Yet much documentation suggests that, paradoxically, women are worse off now than in 1970 (Dankelman and Davidson 1988; Jacobson 1993; Mosse 1993; Rogers 1980).

Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Mini, Louisa, Sadhana, Sanyakta, Kanak, Jothin, Prashant and. the women of the villages of Mohana in Ganjam. And to Augustine and Community
Aid Abroad.

Jo-Anne Everingham is at the University of Southern Queensland, Wide Bay, PO Box 910, Hervey Bay, Queensland 4655, Australia. E-mail: everingh@usq.edu.au.

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The negative consequences of development for women include an increased workload, inferior health status, less access to land, fewer possibilities of producing food, reduced income-earning opportunities relative to men and aggravated social problems. Nevertheless, there is increasing appreciation of the unplanned effects and costs to women and to total income and welfare of &dquo;gender-blind&dquo; (in practice male-biased) development programmes and projects (Joekes 1989: 12). As early as 1981 Ware (1981: 23) sounded a warning about this apparently ready acceptance:
The early universal governmental agreement that women should participate more fully in development (shown, for example, at the United Nations Mid-Decade Conference of Women in 1980) reflects the lack of genuine interest in the subject. Since there is no theoretical debate over how this ideal of greater participation should be implemented, it is easiest for governments of every type of political opinion to agree with the World Plan of Action (United Nations 1980) and to leave the implementation to some unspecified future date.
A further decade and a half has proved this prescient, since in the dominoptional extra. Initial WID scholarship was predominantly empirical and descriptive.

ant development paradigms WID has remained largely an

Increasingly though, gender and development literature has employed a feminist conceptual analysis. My interest in this paper is in determining whether the application of such a theoretical framework gives a basis for understanding the empowerment and conscientisation approach of one development organisation. This approach, as recently redefined in a development context by, say Ostergaard, views women as agents of change rather than just passive recipients or victims of patriarchal actions. It focuses on increasing womens control over the choices in their lives (Ostergaard 1992: 174) and has emerged mainly through the activities of grassroots organisations in less developed countries. It is a bubble-up (rather than trickle-down) approach that works to meet practical gender needs, which are consistent with the long-term strategic interests of women, and seeks to reform public and private structures of inequality and subordination. With so many of Indias 580,000 villages having mahila mandals (womens organisations), there are plenty of avenues for this grassroots approach. The interventions of the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Peoples
Rural Education Movement (PREM) with women in Orissas Mohana block of Ganjam district are examined in terms of Kristevas three types of feminist discourse:
1. Liberal

feminism-seeking

access

to male entitlements: Liberal

feminists regard female subordination as being based on customary

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45

2.

3.

legal constraints. They act to change the rules and structures of society, and challenge access determined on the basis of sex. So their struggles include equal pay for equal work; and positions of power in social institutions on an equal footing with men (Kristeva 1981: 18). Radical feminism-celebrating femininity and difference, rej ecting the male: Radical feminists believe that female subordination results from the effect of female biology on perception (including self-perception) and on the status of women. Liberation requires freedom from mens control over womens bodies and sexuality, and over childbearing and child rearing. It also requires a higher value to be attached to female qualities like nurturing, conciliation and gentleness. Radical feminist strategies are aimed at changing the social status of women and social attitudes towards them. They challenge the downgrading of what is female and suggest lauding it instead (Kristeva 1981: 19). Symbolic-order post-structural feminism-rejecting male-female dualism and analysing the way gendered subjectivity is developed: Symbolic-order post-structural feminism is concerned with womens position in the symbolic order (as well as in production and reproduction). It aims at consciousness raising, focusing on language and other symbolic dimensions of culture, and questioning the whole culturing process. It challenges the textual and conversational production of the female, which is embedded in metaphors, images and life stories, and makes a womans sex or gender their defining characterand
istic. The aim is for women to transcend definitions and labels and the myriad forms and sources of womens oppression which limit their existence (Kristeva 1981: 20).

Kristevas typology was chosen because it specifically recognises a plurality of feminisms and allows for their coexistence, thus avoiding problems of a monolithic theory, fixed categorisation and evolutionary stages. My contention is that village groups of very poor and predominantly illiterate women that focus on gender-based struggles are using feminist strategies of all three types and are succeeding in development goals. Although village women may not specifically identify as feminist, the applicability of feminist theory to understanding such indigenous activities indicates that effective WID cannot be dismissed as the imposition of Western feminism as has been suggested by some in both the North and South, including within official development assistance bodies like the Australian International Development Assistance Bureau (AIDAB), now renamed AUSAID where some staff perceive WID as the imposition of Australian feminist social policies on Third World societies (Pfanner and Ward 1988: 6). Rather, it is clear that these small groups of women collaborating on their own development priorities to improve their lot have

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distinctly typology.

feminist

objectives

and

strategies according

to Kristevas

Womens Position in

Programme Villages

the Adivasis, Dalits and landless peasants of Orissa, women constitute over 50 per cent of the workforce and, according to PREM, they contribute more than 50 per cent of the household income despite inequitable rates of pay. Also, they undertake chores like cooking, washing, childcare, and firewood and water collection. Daughters are given less food, allowed less play and less schooling than sons, and have to take on household tasks earlier. The Soura tribals live in small villages (of 15 to 25 families) scattered in hilly forest country, and Dalit mobility is restricted by poverty and the Hindu ideology of purity and pollution. Hence, few meet women of even nearby villages and literacy among women (at 5 per cent) is half that of men in the focus communities. Women do not hold religious or civic leadership roles such as priests or village heads. Most poor women in these villages are landless day labourers-mainly in agriculture or forestry. They earn Rs. 12 or 13 a day. Men earn Rs. 20. Women often work alongside the men of their family but may not be paid separately. Otherwise they make leaf plates at home, gather mohua flowers, kendu leaves or other forest products for sale in the market. They work 10 to 16 hours per day on productive (including agriculture and forestry) and reproductive tasks (including grain grinding, collecting water and fuel, and childcare). They are usually married by 18 years of age and then have almost annual pregnancies, though the infant mortality rate (IMR) is 50 per cent and is increasing. Life expectancy for women is 50 years (60 for men). Theirs is a situation where male domination is frequently and unsubtly exercised in the form of drunken wife-beating. In 1989 no woman was known to possess land or a bank account in her own name. As the literacy and life expectancy figures above suggest, Orissa is one of the more backward of Indias states with respect to development generally and womens status in particular. Comparisons with states like Haryana and Punjab show that more than twice the proportion of Orissas population lives below the poverty line (Chapman and Baker 1992:17,18) and the fact that 47 per cent of the population are without the three facilities of electricity, safe drinking water and sanitation. Women in this area have been subject to multiple sets of assumptions about gender stereotypes. At an ideological level, the Hindu religion provides the rationale for the existing social order. Traditional discourses, both artistic (literature, paintings, songs and folklore) and religious (especially Hindu), portray the roles of women as tender, obedient, faithful wives, and self-sacrificing and home-loving mothers: the faithful Sita or Savitri. The acculturative influence of Hinduism brings an ideology of natural

Amongst

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inequality and womans subservience, her impurity, her status as an object of enjoyment. Hindu mythodology associates creative energy and power with females to which the patriarchal reaction has been such that female sexuality has conventionally been strictly constrained. Tribal and backward-caste women have traditionally had more rights to paid work outside the home, to divorce and remarry if widowed, and are more likely to live in a nuclear family than higher-caste Oriyan women. Oriyan merchants, landowners and officials (usually forward-caste Hindus), Christian missionaries, development workers from the government and NGOs have all been agents of change. Such modernising influences have added other assumptions about appropriate roles for largely illiterate rural women. Structural changes in the economy have reduced some income-earning opportunities for these women. For instance, factory production reduced demand for handcrafted goods. One of the biggest impact has been the modernisation of agriculture and forestry, with attendant mechanisation, depletion of resources and emphasis on male employment. Womens role in childbearing and raising and caring for children involves numerous subsistence activities-processing food, administering health care, cleaning, collecting fuel and water. These are assumed to be natural rather than essential work. So, while expecting these activities to continue, the development ideology about gender roles downplays this reproductive role of women and tends to seek changes in the productive sphere. Consequently, there has been an emphasis on income-generation projects. Many of the developmental interventions by the government, NGOs and Christian missions have targeted for reform the backwardness of the poor (especially Adivasi and Dalit women). This is generally explained as undesirable cultural practices that can mean anything from tattooing or superstitious temple offerings to casteism or illiteracy. Paradoxically, PREM notes that cultural destruction is becoming a catchword to protect the status quowith particular implications for the continued oppression of tribals and women. This would seem to be typical of a defensive backlash by those whose power is being challenged. PREM argues, however, that an oppressive culture should not be maintained. Certainly, concern about interventions and their cultural appropriateness presents dilemmas for PREM and the Mahila Sanghas, but not from a desire to conserve culturally enshrined power structures. The impossibility of gender neutral interventions makes it imperative that workable WID strategies are employed.
PREMs Goals and Modus

Operandi

My visit to Ganjam district in January 1993 as a guest of PREM was short and was not an academic research trip. Nevertheless, the work I observed stimulated the speculation outlined above and seems well worth sharing in what will necessarily be a descriptive report shaped by PREMs perceptions.

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PREM is a secular NGO based in Berhampur in Orissa. It is a fully Indian NGO, but registered to receive overseas funding and has an established partnership with an Australian NGO for a substantial part of its income (though under 50 per cent). It claims as its goal: The creation of a new social order in which the present unorganised and marginalised people have a say in decision-making, where education creates awareness and develops skills and fosters the growth of talent, where culture is ever creative, where men and women are totally liberated from all the dehumanising and oppressive forces, and where the decisions of individuals, communities and nations are based on the values of social justice, equality, truth, freedom and the dignity of human life. (PREM 1991: 1) The organisation operates in the rural areas of nine (out of 13) districts of Orissa (Figure 1), focusing on those who are most exploited, most unorganised and economically poorest-which means particularly women among the Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes and landless peasant castes. There are 63 tribes in Orissa, which, at 27 per cent, has one of the highest Adivasi (or tribal) population of any Indian state (the national proportion is 7 per cent). One quarter of the population of Mohana block are Soura tribals. Seventeen per cent of Orissas population are Dalits or Scheduled Castes (formerly known as untouchables). With other landless people as well, these poorest groups constitute the majority of the population of many rural villages. In Ganjam district, where it is headquartered, PREM has units in eight blocks (including Mohana) covering 664 villages of a total of about 2,000 villages where it is involved. PREM is essentially an educational team, but while it does provide some non-formal schooling for children, its understanding of education is in the broad sense of community learning and awareness that stimulates greater community participation, action and organisation. So PREMs staff team concentrates on developing leadership and facilitating organisational efforts within the focal groups. PREM staff fall into three main categories:
1. A

2.

training team (of about nine members) to run workshops and give training in aspects such as community organisation, leadership, nonformal education, cooperative formation and operation, agriculture, forestry and community health. The team moves to various areas to support village animators and organisations. A cultural team of artists (also about nine people), which uses songs, street theatre and puppet shows to illustrate village situations and problems, and to motivate villagers to action on various issues.

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3.

Village workers, selected locally and given training to be animators and voluntary office-bearers of village and cluster-level organisations or trained for specific development activities, for example, as instructors in non-formal schools.

Any actual developmental activities are planned and executed by the people themselves though PREM will help them develop relevant expertise as and when requested. So, for example, 187 villages have community forests established, 859 have womens savings programmes, 125 have nonformal schools and so on. To make maximum use of human resources everyone in a village is encouraged to participate in organisations. This also means that development activities move beyond the mobilisation of human capital to fostering and mobilising social capital, which involves norms of cooperative efforts, trust, reciprocity and voluntarism. There are no specific forms of womens organisations prescribed, so a variety have emerged in terms of focus, constituency and modus operandi, including cooperatives, geographical groups (especially village) and occupational groups (for example, head-loading women, women tailors). While the organisations have sub-groups ranging from discussion fora to welfare societies to credit cooperatives, all of them operate democratically. PREM calls these groups Mahila Sanghas while conceding there are differences between the organisations they promote and traditional Mahila Sanghas. The traditional Mahila Sanghas deal with problems and issues which are
considered by men as womens issues (PREM 1991: 25). PREMs Mahila Sanghas have about 15 to 40 members each. They are coordinated at cluster and block levels, and are part of a state-level federation in which other NGOs also participate (Figure 1). They also relate closely to the Orissa Womens Savings Development and Welfare Society. In Mohana there are 23 cluster-level organisations (CLOs) with seven to 15 villages per cluster. Also, women are taking much more active roles in peoples organisations, which involve both men and women.

PREMs

Objectives

PREMs first objective is to create awareness among women and organise them into village-, block- and state-level units so that they are able to assert themselves in economic, political and cultural fields as subjects, and experience equality, dignity and freedom as equal partners of men (PREM 1991: 7). At the vanguard of PREMs activities in any village is their culture team. They give dramatic and musical performances followed by discussion of problems. People often see basic functional literacy as a way to combat problems such as exploitation by moneylenders, employers and

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corrupt government officials, and lack of access to social institutions. So a

Paulo Freire style of education is provided next. Because this method has people asking or formulating questions and nominating pertinent issues, it is more than just literacy training-indeed, it essentially gives people the power of language and the ability to articulate their lives. Freire (1972) himself used the term conscientisation. These initial contacts not only increase general awareness leading to a desire for action on practical gender needs such as water supply, domestic violence or equal wages, but also identify women Sangha founders and those with organisational and leadership potential who could be trained. During these initial stages the village animators have to overcome expectations of handouts, the hostility of men, womens passivity, and their perception that they lack time and leadership. The Mahila Sanghas gradually began to assert themselves in their respective villages as women realised the value of united action in areas wider and other than matters stereotyped as womens issues. It would also appear that the Sanghas regard many kinds of feminist approaches as legitimate.

Liberal Feminism
Given womens subordinate position, Mahila Sanghas strive for equality by seeking extension of mens rights to women and equitable access for women. Women want economic, political, professional and sexual equality. Hence, they agitate for equal pay, equal work, equal education, equal roles in institutions of power-attempts to gain an equal place in the system while not necessarily endorsing its ideology. Specific struggles have sought the implementation of equity legislation, a reduced domestic burden for women, fair returns for womens labour, land titles for women, more women in political office, more education for girls and sexual equality, including removal of the stigma on widowhood and rights to dowry-free

marriages.
Implementation of Equity Legislation
Often a Mahila Sangha first agitates for existing egalitarian legislation to be implemented, leading to an early empowering success. Legislation already enshrines the right of women to equal pay; to dowry-free marriage; of deserted or divorced women to maintenance; the right of Dalit women to draw water from the village caste well; of those with an income below Rs. 300 per month to ration cards. Women of one Mahila Sangha burned their ration cards outside the revenue office to protest the official recording of their income as Rs. 500 per month. In other villages, cardholders now receive essential commodities regularly.

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52

Dowry demands are increasing even though amounts to date are modest among the poor-a bicycle or a pair of earrings. The Mahila Sanghas regularly try to convince people of the desirability of dowry-free marriages. These efforts may be directed at the groom, his family or the bride.
Domestic Burden
To some extent striving for equality means women have to prove themselves in traditionally male-dominated spheres, but the Mahila Sanghas insist this cannot be on top of unchanged traditional responsibilities. Women want equality within the household and wish for mens acceptance of equal roles in the spheres of work and family. The first achievement of women in many Mahila Sanghas is that their husbands will take responsibility for childcare while they attend meetings. They also seek recognition of the value of their paid (productive) and unpaid (both productive and reproductive) work, and a shift in power relationships in each sphere. Men now contribute to some of the unpaid household work such as grinding grain and collecting firewood, and exert less absolute power over the movements and activities of the women in their household. They have exhibited pride in the achievements of women and their contribution to household and community well-being.

Economic

Equality

The Mahila Sanghas highlight the disproportionate impact of development on women, for example, the effects of commercial forestry on women who depend on forest products for livelihood and subsistence. Dairy cooperatives are a smaller-scale development initiative that have had negative effects too, since women, who had always milked cows and sold milk, became marginalised as manual labourers, and men received training and official positions. Now in some villages the women have formed dairy cooperatives that have been more successful than male-dominated ones! To achieve equal pay or employment opportunities, militant actions by smallish groups of 15 to 30 women are used, such as 24-hour sit-ins outside an offending employers home or government office. In a bigger action, 300 women from six CLOs held a gram yatra (march), which won a 33 per cent price rise for khali (leaf plates).
Land

Ownership

Title to at least a house plot gives security from eviction. The Materu Shakti (womens or mothers power) CLO has succeeded in gaining 20 title deeds to house blocks for landless people in the various villages they serve-12

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of them in the name of women. Land titles in the Mohana area were of issued only in 1988 and few to traditional owners, so 80 per cent of the land is owned by outsiders, and many locals, who made a living from minor forest products and podu (shifting cultivation), now work as agricultural day labourers. Souras are trying to claim land under tribal title provisions; and wasteland legislation provides for tribals and Dalits to receive titles by converting degraded hilly areas into orchards. Political Status
To give women access to decision-making positions, a block-level peoples organisation in Mohana backed candidates at local elections (many of them women). They won 12 out of 20 seats in one panchayat. In fact, one of the successful women candidates would have been elected sarapancha (panchayat head), except that the opposition kidnapped two of her supporters on the day of that vote! The right to participate in meetings and political activities is even more basic and has generally been denied to women in the area. When PREM trainers conduct programmes for women in villages it is not unusual for a woman to report that her husband has forbidden her to attend. The problem is then raised at a village meeting to challenge

the men.

Literacy
Informal

village schools with over 4,000 children (and 1,500 adults) are encouraging female students, but enrolments are still only two-thirds of
male levels (PREM 1992: 2). Women were among the 20,000 adults made literate by the Each one teach one; 100 per cent literacy in 100 days campaign. One of the official reforms to encourage the schooling of girls has been the Rs. 5,000 marriage benefit for girls educated upto 18 years of age. If the Mahila Sanghas encourage women to take advantage of this offer, would they be implicitly endorsing the ever-encroaching dowry system? Such dilemmas reveal the complexity of issues facing women working against sexual oppression while inevitably also playing a part in the reproduction of social injustices. Sexual

Equality

The asymmetrical requirement of female chastity and womens relative lack of freedom of movement (essentially to ensure their sexual purity) has been challenged. Among these landless, Scheduled Caste people, women without husbands (widows and divorcees) whose mobility is particularly restricted by tradition, often become activists because they

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54

free of direct male domination. When the leader of one Mahila Sangha continued her Sangha work after losing her husband, the local panchayat forbade her free movement. This widow, Panchamicolo, argued the importance of continuing her work. At first, the gram panchayat agreed to let her organise the Sangha only in her village but finally had to concede that she had to visit neighbouring villages too in the course of her work.
are

Radical Feminism

Equality in legal or other official terms is not the goal of all actions especially since rule of law and systemic change are unreliable. Rather, on some issues action is taken to ensure that being female does not bring loss of status and a parallel self-help system is instituted. Women demand recognition of their uniqueness and reject the devalued stereotypes of womens roles in production and reproduction, which have defined them as inferior. As radical feminists, members of Mahila Mandals are claiming the right to control their work, their bodies and their lives rather than have men assume this control. However, there are limits to this type of action. In Eisensteins terms the Mahila Sanghas are not creating an otherworld of female retreat, but rather changing the world in the image of woman-centred values (Bulbeck 1990:135). It is not based on exclusion or scapegoating of menonly of some of their behaviours. Specific instances of Mahila Sanghas
acting as radical feminists include the formation of alternative social, political or economic institutions, and struggles for control of their own bodies, reproductive rights and freedom from violence. They promote the value of female children; decry the measuring of a wifes worth by the number of sons she bears; and postulate new definitions of female virtue.
Alternative Institutions
In many villages meetings of the Mahila Sanghas highlight the exploitation of the people by moneylenders and womens inability to access credit or operate savings accounts with banks. Rather than campaign against bank discrimination, they have established a savings and loans society of their own. For the first two years a members can only save. The 16,189 members of the savings scheme accumulate more than Rs. 1 million in a year. Men can save with the credit union but are not part of the governing body (Figure 2). Bribery is an integral part of the corrupt stratified society, which the Mahila Sanghas reject. Sexual favours or cash were the norm. Now they have forsworn bribes of any kind and are discussing ways of achieving this. Womens centres have been established to provide alternative sources of legal aid, health care and counselling for women.

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Structure of the

Figure 2 Savings Programme

Source: PREM (1992: 26).

Womens Control

over

their Environment

The perspective of the Mahila Sanghas places less emphasis on womens suffering and incorporates acceptance and celebration of womens strength and resourcefulness. This could be misunderstood as a reinforcement of gender stereotypes and some development solutions may seem to be inappropriately ambivalent. For instance, Mahila Sanghas may not wish to challenge womens traditional role as carriers of water, preferring instead to retain the shared (and exclusively female) time at the pump so long as location of water and its quality are improved. Similarly, given womens traditional responsibility for collecting fuelwood, is involvement in

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reafforestation a further burden exploiting women and conforming to the

stereotype or is it empowerment?
Womens Control
over

their

own

Bodies

In the Mahila Sanghas women are no longer passive victims of atrocities such as wife-beating, desertion, rape, female child labour, widow-hating and eve-teasing (harassment). For instance, when an intelligence officer in Chandragiri tried to molest a woman doing casual work inside the compound, the Mahila Sangha reported the incident to the senior officer. He did not act, so the next time one of their number was subjected to similar treatment the Mahila Sangha members beat up the individual concerned themselves. But they say the biggest challenge is to campaign against crimes against women that are often based on the notion that women are the property of men. Frequently women are kidnapped, paraded naked or raped as a means of harming the men whose daughters, wives or mothers they may be. But these protests must not be interpreted of course as a defence of mens proprietorial rights over women. In standing up for their rights over their bodies, on occasion women could be disadvantaging themselves at another level. There is ambivalence, for instance, on some issues concerning their bodies: should the taboos surrounding menstruation be decried as degrading or exclusion from work at such times be welcomed as a respite for women?

Reproductive Rights
As Bulbeck (1990: 131) has noted in a cultural milieu where women have seen forced sterilisation and female infanticide, contraceptive and abortion rights may not seem such a high priority as the right to have healthy children. Thus, Mahila Sanghas may campaign for child immunisation as a priority over family planning. However, women are eager to control their own reproductive strategies and support a womans right to make decisions about the number and spacing of children.

Freedom from Violence

Because the most

frequent violence experienced by these women is do-

mestic, and because alcohol is almost always an aggravating factor, antialcohol campaigns are very popular. Some women have endured beatings from their husbands for 25 years. The Mahila Sanghas urge them to confront the men or have the police inform offenders of the laws related to women and punishments for violating them. Some Mahila Sanghas punish offending husbands themselves. When a husband comes home intoxicated and starts beating his wife, the women bind him in a room for 24 hours without

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food or water and seek a public apology to the wife. Other groups of women
visit the sundhis (distillers) to persuade them to stop their activities, file a case in the police station, or confront complicit officials or leaders demanding a written undertaking to desist.

Post-structural Feminism

My situation as an outsider to the religion, culture and language prevalent in the area and the short duration of my field visit (four weeks) meant that I could not fully appreciate the womens recognition of the oral, textual and experiental production of their identity and the extent to which they were breaking down the gendered subjectivity so cultivated. Nevertheless,
their vociferous denunciation of the Sita and Savitri ideal and of Manu the Lawgivers three cultural bondages to father, husband and son was striking evidence that women are taking up such cultural issues. The women realised that by glorifying the traditional role of women as housewives and the monotonous and unpaid drudgery of household work, they were serving the interests of men and destroying their own physical and mental health. They realised that the root cause of their perpetual slavery was this division of roles conveniently defined by men and accepted

by women:
family is instilled into a woman. If she wants this cocoon-like existence, serving her husband and sons, she will have to accept injustice. From childhood a woman is taught to act like a martyr, to give up her desires and expectations totally. This samarpan (total dedication) is exalted as a virtue in women. (PREM 1991: 26)
A subservience to her husband and

Many of PREMs cultural programmes involve reinterpretations of myths, epics and folktales, or creation of new ones in street theatre productions, to identify alternative images of women and provide examples
of womens resistance and role in transformation as well as cultural conservation. The Mahila Sanghas acknowledge that the powerful web of ideas, values and prescriptions attached to gender includes not only traditional constructions of gender stereotypes by religion but by modernising development as well. For example, Crimes against women have become plots for audio-visual entertainments (PREM 1991: 26). The women have a vision of a society beyond gender divisions though they realise it will take time to achieve. It will take many generations for the emergence of the new women and men who can think, decide and live as equal partners in economic, political and cultural spheres of family,

village and state (PREM 1991: 27). PREM hopes to inspire women leaders themselves to evolve their own art and literature so that the art and literature can become a genuine

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expression of

their inner longings, aspirations, frustrations and hopes. Above all, the new art and literature will promote the opinions of the women for taking socio-economic, political and cultural decisions in their

society (PREM 1991: 24).

The eagerness of the women to hear of womens lives in Australia, noting the parallels and differences with respect to marital status, sexual freedom and domestic interactions, was significant, especially given the centrality of marriage to their religious and cultural life. Far from a defensive upholding of their traditional customs, theirs seemed an open-minded preparedness to consider alternatives. In their quest for a non-gendered subjectivity, these women have freely adopted rhetoric from various discourses-not only feminist, but also leftist, Gandhian, Dalit (as enunciated by the muchrespected Dr. Ambedkar), postcolonial and religious (Buddhist and Christian). I am sure there would have been resistance to outsiders (including Western or even metropolitan Indian feminists) setting their agenda and determining which cultural practices to challenge. However, there was no rejection of feminist ideals and strategies.

Gender and

Development

There is a growing body of opinion that if there is one group in society that needs to be assisted to achieve social justice, it is women. Foster-Carter (1985: 115) writes: If I were ever tempted to see a single social group and their particular afflictions and struggles as the key to transforming our world, then for me it would be neither workers, nor peasants as such, but rather those who were for so long astonishingly invisible to sociologists and socialists alike, the minority who are in fact the majority.
A focus on key development challenges leads us back to a common den~minator-women. Gender bias has been identified as a primary cause

of poverty (Jacobson 1993: 62), environmental degradation (Dankelman and Davidson 1988: 169), militarisation (Ruddick 1989: 251), human rights abuse (Mosse 1993: 101), high population growth rates, low agricultural productivity (Taylor 1985: 25) and many other major concerns of development. Perhaps those who identify womens development as the potential source of salvation for a development that has come unstuck recognise the subversive potential of women which Kristeva (1981: 30) hailed: what an unbelievable force for subversion in the modern world! A strong, woman-centred approach to development could successfully tackle deeply entrenched societal as well as personal problems confronted daily by the Mahila Sanghas. The multidimensional empowerment approach facilitated by PREM holds much promise. The Mahila Sanghas are

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exploring new ways of being women in Oriyan society. They are gaining a place for women in the existing patriarchal system and creating their own
alternatives with diverse, flexible, democratic, autonomous institutions though by no means are they at the terrorist commando group end of Kristevas continuum (1981: 26).2 There have been many top-down attempts-by political parties, unions, development organisations and even

government departments-to reach, even mobilise, women (Omvedt 163), but spontaneous and identifiably feminist organisations networked through grassroots bodies with women as key decision makers, implementers and beneficiaries have been more successful in this part of
some

1980:

Orissa.

Notes
1. In Brazil in the

1960s, Paulo Freire pioneered and advocated radical education methods functional adult literacy as a tool of emancipation, social transformation and awareness raising. He outlined his philosophy and methods in Pedagogy of the Oppressed

using

(1972).
2. There
are a number of what PREM calls peoples organisations at block (taluka) level. They have all come together in a state-level federation. In Ganjam alone these include: Bapuji Gramya Kalyana Samaja (BGKS), Jana Shakti, Palloe Vikas, Sorada Peoples Organisation, Sramik Seva Samiti, Sagar Seva Samiti, Lipica and Khemundi Multi Development Society (KMDS). Some are mixed women and mens groups, some focus on youth, some are organisations based on occupations. However, it is a bit peripheral to the gender focus of this paper to mention all the others.

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