Spotlight on women’s struggle against poverty

from the Hindu

Aruna Roy delivers Sunanda Bhandare Memorial Lecture

NEW DELHI: The right to be heard and the right to speak are manifestations of women’s struggle against poverty, said Ramon Magsaysay Award winner Aruna Roy here.

Delivering the 13th Justice Sunanda Bhandare Memorial Lecture on “Democracy: Women’s Struggle Against Poverty”, Ms. Roy said urban India often fails to connect with the problems and issues that face people in rural areas.

Citing her own example, she said: “In 1975 when I went to Rajasthan to tell a group of rural women whatever I knew about education and health, I was asked to go back to where I came from. The women were more concerned about their everyday lives -- bringing up children, colleting fuel for fire – and had no use for what I had to say.”

Pointing out that the “logic of rural women is infallible”, she said it was imperative that educated people “learn” from it.

“When we go to rural areas we talk of having toilets, because there are no toilets and we think they are necessary.”

“However, for the rural women, toilets mean extra water to be fetched. For them drinking water is the priority,” she said.

“Houses built for people under Indira Awas Yojana are lying vacant today, because someone in their wisdom decided that the houses should be built far away from the villages,” she pointed out.

Making a case for inclusion of the poor and the marginalised into the mainstream and for giving them respect and equal opportunities, Ms. Roy said: “The poor in the rural areas are too proud to ask. They want work, even in the worst famines I have come across people who do not ask for money or for food.”

Claiming that the rich-poor divide has led to relegation of those who are financially deprived, she said: “We do not want to see poverty; we keep pushing the workers, the beggars out. They are a violation to our sense of peace. We fail to see the dignity, which makes a woman or a child sell wares at traffic signals.”

Appreciating the implementation of the Right to Information Act and the Employment Guarantee Act, she said: “We should be proud for having such Acts. We need people who seek social audits.” Ms. Roy paid tributes to rural women who despite being illiterate and marginalised participated in the struggle for the implementation of the RTI Act and the Minimum Wages Guarantee Act. She said the foundations for the struggle for enactment of both the acts were laid by rural women. Vice-President Mohammed Hamid Ansari, who was the chief guest on the occasion, said those who are the most affected and the most concerned (with the issues that face the marginalised) are the ones who perceive the practical realities of empowerment.