The question of women

The lot of Indian women may not have improved much in recent years, but the women's movement has lost much of its fizz. Dowry and related violence continue as before, gender ratios get more skewed, female foeticide continues unchecked in illegal abortion clinics; women are raped, gang-raped, trafficked "" but it doesn't excite the kind of outrage or agitation by women's groups that one saw in the 1980s and 1990s. In such a scenario, a book like this one serves the very important function of re-attracting attention to the very vexed, knotty, intractable problems that still blight the lives of large numbers of women.

Whether it then sparks off a debate depends on the merit of the discourse and on whether it brings anything new to the table. If this is the parameter by which one were to judge this book, then it must be said that it doesn't quite pass muster. Which is such a pity considering that Madhu Kishwar is, as the blurb reminds, "one of the pioneers of the contemporary women's rights movement in India", and founder editor of Manushi, an independent journal that highlights the social, political, economic issues affecting women.

One important reason for this is that the articles aren't new and thus read a little dated. They were printed in Manushi and other publications like EPW over a 25-year period, and have been reproduced without revision, even where the material circumstances have changed. Then again, the fact that almost all the arguments still hold is an important critique in itself, a pointer to how Kishwar and her ilk have not really had any lasting impact on ground realities.

Kishwar, of course, makes a number of very valid and very important points. Here's a brief checklist "" passing draconian laws with severe punitive measures is not going to bring about social reform, it'll only make matters worse; looking at gender issues in isolation, and not as a function of the ambient socio-economic conditions, or imposing alien, Western notions of equality will further alienate women in distress; women's organisations frequently do more harm than good; empowering women by ensuring a steady source of income works better than sporadic palliative measures.

One can't quarrel with any of this, although there are passages which smack of a very conservative bias. But what can get irritating is a tendency to run down other NGOs working in the same area as wrong-headed or having vested interests. Then there is a certain facetiousness "" for example, where Kishwar suggests that individuals/organisations that want a change in law should submit "at least 500 statements on oath" by relatives, friends and neighbours that they will comply with the new law and report each violation to the police. Further, if the state should propose a bull-headed law, then it should test its viability on its own employees. Surely, Kishwar can't be serious!

The lynchpin of Kishwar's own prescription for alleviating the misery and oppression of Indian women, when she isn't being tongue-in-cheek, is amending the Hindu Succession Act so that daughters cannot be disinherited. But there's been the 2005 amendment of the Act since Kishwar wrote, and which takes much the edge off her argument. Kishwar has objections to the new provisions which she footnotes in the essay "Inheritance Rights for Women", that they're "not comprehensive enough", that inequalities in agricultural land would remain as long as discriminatory state laws are not amended.

Wouldn't a fresh article that analysed the changed dynamics as a result of the new provisions in the Hindu Succession Act have been better? After all, the problem of implementation remains with these well-meaning amendments, as it does with all the other laws ever passed to improve women's lives in India "" as Kishwar so eloquently argues. Or is she thinking along the lines of Sharad Joshi's Laxmi Mukti Karyakram, of a voluntary donation sparked off by a charismatic male leader? But then, as Kishwar is quick to point out, such voluntary movements inevitably lose momentum. Is state action the only way out then? Kishwar doesn't give an answer.

ZEALOUS REFORMERS, DEADLY LAWS
BATTLING STEREOTYPES

Madhu Purnima Kishwar
Sage
Rs 495, Pages 419